Our guest poster Alison Golden drops in again this month with her personal jewelry journey. Enjoy her story, and then stay a bit and share your jewelry story. I bet you have one…
I wasn’t much of a dress-up girl when I was little. I had my favorite little frocks, I occasionally rifled through my mother’s jewelry tray. But I wasn’t what you’d call a real dressy little girl. I just wasn’t that interested.
And even more so through my adolescence. Shopping would leave me overwhelmed. I didn’t know what I liked, wanted or needed. But definitely not frilly things. I just seemed to get confused. Lord knows how I got dressed. Thank goodness for school uniform.
I do remember coveting pierced ears though. My friends started getting theirs done around age 14. My parents made me wait. Until I was sixteen. Two years. It was torture. I started looking at earrings. At the types that I’d like to wear one day. At that stage in my development, I was still into small and discreet but that was to change.
Finally on my sixteenth birthday, I was there. Enduring that girly rite of passage: the ear piercing. I’d, of course, been regaled by gory tales but it wasn’t too bad. I wasn’t kept awake by the pain and I felt finally initiated into the world of womanhood. I had just started.
Elegant Pearls, Crystal & Sterling Silver
Maybe it was reaching the milestone, maybe it was the wait but there began a lifelong interest in earrings. Even today, one look at my ears on any given day and you can tell how I’m feeling.
Shortly after my initiation, the trend at the time for multiple piercings bisecting a rebellious stage in my teenagedom resulted in some home experiments, a look I reveled in for several years; I pierced three more holes in one ear resulting in a 4:1 combo. Suggesting, as it did, a far more independent, edgy character than the one I normally portrayed, it invoked attention and a certain respect from my peers, rolled eyes (a surprisingly muted response) from my parents and a general feeling of glee at my outrageous anarchic behavior from myself.
From there I became heavily invested in ear adornment. It became a means to express my inner wild child and I took it as far as I could given the restrictions of school, home and later the workplace. I worked for a time in a lively pub and there I could express myself to my heart’s content and studs, rings and dangly accoutrements would regularly dazzle the customers to the point of becoming a source of conversation and anticipation.
But, inevitably, the demands of adulthood, the need to earn an income and the desire to be taken seriously intellectually, dampened my enthusiasm for outrageous earrings. Slowly I went from wild 4:1 combinations, to more conservative earrings to dropping to a 2:1 and then a more conventional 1:1 pairing.
Since then, I’ve gone through many phases with my jewelry. I continued to be known for my large, dangly earrings as befitted someone in their 20’s on a night out in the 1990’s. I was more restrained at work and accompanied my business attire with pearls, glass and more delicate work.
My future husband noted my interest in earrings and wooed me with such gifts, making a point of bringing me back a pair from every business trip and I’ve always liked being bought jewelry as a gift as I often receive items I perhaps normally wouldn’t choose
causing my jewelry evolution to continue.Shortly after that, I went through a phase of wearing no jewelry at all when I had two curious babies who were likely to do me some serious damage with an intrigued pull or two so at that point, I just kept to the basic stud waiting for the time when I could resume my jewelry journey once again.
Today, I have a moderately sized collection which has expanded to include necklaces and the odd bracelet. I make a point of wearing some jewelry every day and if I’m wearing a suitable neckline and it is practical to do so, a necklace. I feel dressed up and pretty even if the rest of me isn’t particularly so on that occasion. And I wear it even if the school run is the most exciting thing in my day.
A quick look at my jewelry box will reveal everything from the chunky necklace my mother bought me at nineteen and which still, even today, draws a compliment every time I wear it, to my wedding jewelry, to the necklace I was given when I left my last job, to the fashion jewelry I buy from Lisa. None of it is especially valuable except sentimentally. And that’s the way I like it.
Alison Golden
Blogs:
http://www.warrior-woman.com
http://www.warrior-mommy.com
http://www.ttappninja.comTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/alisonjgolden
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