Tiny Legacy

I'd better make this quick, and for the usual reason: it's late. In fact it's dawn, give or take a couple of minutes. I haven't been to bed yet. I've spent all afternoon, evening and night on Round Robin stuff, on watching, rewatching and reacting to the best episode of Doctor Who so far this year ("Silence in the Library" by Steven Moffat), on digging up stuff, photographing it and editing shots for this entry, and (believe it or not) on cleaning my desk.

In making the rounds of other Robins' entries, I had a few ideas about additional tiny things I could show you, stuff I forgot even existed. One thing in particular I thought of was my mom's old charm bracelet from the 1960s. It used to be on my desk, and I know I've photographed it before; but I can't find either the bracelet or the photos. Not in the short term, anyway.

But in looking for it, I went through a box in the bedroom, at the very bottom of which I found two more old pairs of my glasses, one of which I'm wearing now as computer glasses. I also went through my jewelry boxes, most of which used to belong to my mom and are full of her old jewelry and other tiny treasures. That's when I found these:


From left to right, we've got a felt pouch containing a single cut opal, an old cross and religious medal set, a musical globe pendant and a tiny wooden box from Guatemala. Let's take a closer look at each:


I suspect that the opal was a replacement stone for one of her rings that had an empty setting. I have at least one ring of hers like that. In the early 1980s I had an opal ring made for her, but this is a better stone than the little slivers in the one I commissioned.

The cross and the two medals (Sacred Heart and either Joseph or St. Christopher, not sure which) are attached to the patch of black leather with little steel brads. There is no writing on them to explain the significance, if any, but it strikes me as being something other than your basic religious jewelry.

I may have bought the little box at St. Michael's at an Advent bazaar; certainly Mom never made it to Guatemala. The lid doesn't fit the base very well, but it's handmade and may have expanded or contracted or both over the years.

The globe is the twin of one I received as a Christmas present from Worldwide Travel one year. I can't remember now whether Sandy of Worldwide gave my Mom this one for some reason, or whether I came across these for sale after receiving mine, and bought one for Mom. I suspect the latter.

Here it is with the writing on the tag showing. It's got something inside that makes it tinkle like a bell, sort of.

And here you go: a real closeup of the thing itself. It's not the most detailed map of the world, but it is a pretty little thing.


One more thing that turned up wasn't jewelry: this tiny padlock. I did not find a tiny key.

Karen