Does she wear them? Now she does. All the time. A guest post by artist, teacher, and damned tenacious pearl-wearer Michelle Kaisersatt.
Pearls. My first intro to pearls – Katharine Hepburn. I loved the way she dressed! (still love her style…) She was elegant, sassy, both in style and in personality, and she was cutting edge. All of that rolled into one big flair in apostrophe! One of my favorites was a dress she wore with a chiffon scarf flowing behind her back, secured loosely with a short strand of pearls about the neck. Stunning!
Then came Julie and Julia. You know the movie. The one about the blogger who cooks her way through a self-induced challenge while using Julia Child’s recipes, all within a one year time line – while also blogging about it. I believe for Julie’s 30th birthday her husband gave her a strand of pearls. (Julia always wore pearls!)
Enter into my life…. I am pretty picky. I will admit it. My hubby bought me a piece of jewelry for Christmas many years ago, and because it was uncomfortable around my neck, I asked if I could take the 14k gold necklace back. I spent the whole afternoon searching and I came back with a 14k gold and blue sapphire ring. It wasn’t a necklace, and let’s just say the taste it left was not sweet, for him.
Flash forward to 2012. My hubby and I have been married for 30 years. He gets wind through (at least) two viewings of Julie and Julia, how pearls are a woman’s best friend. So he asked if I would like to have a string of pearls for ‘the’ 30th Anniversary gift. Official gift for 30th anniversaries is indeed ‘pearls’! Since my darling husband knows my particular choices, he went out and did some serious shopping. Finding options for me to look at, try on, and interject my thoughts about. In the end, he chose and purchased the gift. That is what thirty years of heavenly bliss (seriously) will do for you!
As Ann will state, they do sit in the silk lined box, in the special drawer, waiting for those special moments. Except our life added a little twist to the story. We had a house fire in March of 2014, losing…e v e r y t h i n g. (Yes, heavy sigh.)
One of the first things my husband grieved openly about…the wedding dress I had sewn from scratch (with hand-sewn pearls on the sleeves and bodice) that was also sitting in a white box in the closet and is now only a memory, and the string of pearls which he had given me for our thirtieth! The sweet part of this story is that he searched and searched for a replacement necklace that was very similar to what I had had in the white silk lined box in my jewelry drawer. We found one that was perfect, and we went and bought it together. He was so excited for me to have that piece of jewelry back, and he gave me an early birthday present of a pair of pearl earrings to go with it.
It is one year later. These have even more meaning to me than the previous gift did. It is a mile marker. A testimony to all of the trials and tribulations we have shared together. So I decided to wear them as often as I could. To defy the white silk lined box the opportunity to hold them more than I would wear them! And. I. Love. Them! I wear them with jeans.
I wear them with my red cashmere sweater, to try and emulate the 50’s. And this past holiday, over Easter, I put on my white blouse with a turned up collar, added a colorful scarf tied in front like an ascot to defy style, and donned my pearls for the finishing touch. Kathryn was smiling down at me – as was my hubby!
Tucked behind the scarf, but you can feel them, right? They give off a feel.
Michelle is a fine, fine artist who makes urns, keepsake vessels and more. She blogs over here at A Mindful Life.
Tomorrow: Sweet dreams of pearls just showing up. Just like that, showing up. And then, undreamy lessons.
ann rosenquist fee 