Tag: charmed

Tiny Tuesday!

When Tom and I first married and moved to Houston, not making much money and buried in student loan debt, I was walking through the/a mall one day and spied this brass necklace–a different kind of charm necklace, I guess–and I wanted it. I was deeply into writing a novel about a musician and constantly surrounded myself with totems to create a writing mood.

The necklace didn’t even cost very much–maybe forty dollars?–but I put it on layaway to be able to buy it. That’s how little disposable income we had. I threw a few dollars at it when I could until it was mine.

Later, different times and places, I found the grand piano brass pin that was a good match for the necklace. And on a different occasion, a pair of grand piano earrings.

We met Tom’s family in Destin, I think, for vacation sometime during that era, and my friend Riley happened to be living in Florida then, so I got to spend some time with him. He loved this whole little jewelry ensemble–of course! he was a musician and songwriter who payed piano, guitar, drums–and when we said goodbye, he asked if he could have one of the earrings. I gave it to him immediately, maybe our own version of the best friend charm, split into two, which each friend wears on a bracelet until they are reunited.

Who knows whatever happened to his earring. I’d give damn near everything I own to bring him back.

I believe that one day, I’ll be able to write the novel in my head that’s meant to honor the profound friendship we had. Last month marked eleven years since he slipped from my life and out of this world, and I miss him every single day.

Charmed: Heroes often fail

When I was a little girl, people began giving me charms. The first was silver (a car); the second, gold (a round disk engraved with the date of my baptism). My parents gave me two charm bracelets to start homes for my collections, one for silver, and one for gold, and as I grew up, went to high school, then to college, there were many more gifts of charms from my father, mother, boyfriends, and also there were school-related charms.

My first year of graduate school, my apartment was broken into and most of my jewelry stolen, including the two charm bracelets. These are things you can never replace. I don’t think I was the buyer of a single one of the charms. All gifts. All gone. My heart was broken.

Lynne had a really nice charm bracelet, and I was looking at it a few years later and wondered, Why can’t I buy my own charms? I’ll get ones that mean something to me. Maybe I’ll even find replacements for some of those lost. So I began collecting again, and other people began giving them to me, too, and suddenly there were too many for a bracelet. So I moved them to a necklace, and the charms kept coming.

Recently I decided the necklace was too heavy. I rarely wore it. It was so cluttered with charms, SERIOUSLY cluttered, that they didn’t sparkle and tinkle as charms should. I decided to move the charms to bracelets, and each bracelet would have a theme.

In all, it has taken seven bracelets to divide the charms to full advantage. (And that is leaving another eleven charms to remain on the necklace.)

I have two bracelets that I call “character charms”; that is, they are based on the first two (unpublished) novels I wrote. The wishing well charm that began this post is not on either of those bracelets. However… here, will you listen to this song and then keep reading?

This was a song that taught me early in life that songwriters are storytellers. I’d listen to this over and over and create different stories from Gordon Lightfoot’s words. And though the song wasn’t literally translated into something I wrote, when I hear it now, I understand how all the sadness and emotion and yearning and regret it evoked became a central part of two of my most important characters. There are even details from this song woven into who they are to each other, which I only recently realized as I stared at the charm and tried to recall when and where I got it.

I don’t remember. But I remember them. They remain with me for all time and I’m grateful for Gordon Lightfoot’s beautiful song as a reminder and this charm as a memento of them.

This starts a new series in which I’ll occasionally use my charms as the focal point of what I write here. Hope you enjoy.

Flash and trash

Some days in rescue are harder than others, and yesterday and today were tough ones. I won’t go into detail because I don’t want to break hearts plus I have shed enough tears myself.

While I worked my job today, I also sporadically colored to give myself a space to breathe and escape to the world inside my imagination, where there are characters who have accompanied me for decades. I’d started coloring something last month because it reminded me of dialogue from a fictional, fated meeting that I once wrote and sometimes mentally revise.

Tom had gone to a baby shower for a friend, so when the magic hour came that I knew there’d be no new email for a while, I dashed out of the house. I don’t ever want to go to the Galleria–I’m not a shopper–but there used to be a certain merchant there who I visited when I was looking for something very specific (specific silver charms, in case I sound mysterious, which I don’t mean to be).

He is not there anymore, and I walked the Galleria looking for someone similar, but the merchandise I saw just made me feel sad. It’s a Kardashian-Trump world, with everything too flashy, too trashy, and not remotely for me.

I came home mostly empty handed and finished this.

I wondered if I should work the phrase more specifically into my dialogue. Then I wondered if it came from some other book or movie or song, so I Googled it.

Ugh. Kanye tweeted it on his one-year anniversary to Kim. It probably isn’t even original to him, but still, you can’t escape the Kardashians ever. I’m staying home from now on with my characters.

Photo Friday, No. 560

Current Photo Friday theme: Golden


I love this bracelet my mother had for her five grandchildren because it’s simple and old-fashioned. In order here, not by age, are charms for Sarah, Gina, Josh, Daniel, and Aaron. Their birthdates are engraved on the backs of the charms.

Aaron came along more than two decades after the first grandchild, Daniel, so his is different from the other two boys’ charms. It took me a while to find a place in Houston that carried them, and I don’t remember what year I gave her the charm to complete her bracelet.

Charmed

So many photos of good birthday stuff I want to share. So many pills for allergies leave me in a semi-vegetative state.

For a while, I’ve been wanting to create a somewhat non-traditional charm bracelet. Tim and Hanley shopped for me at Fly High Little Bunny and picked up three Waxing Poetic charms for my birthday. They have good taste.


The charms gave me the incentive to start my new bracelet. I found one with a bit of leather wound through silver links.

More birthday goodies to come…

Show off your favorite books!

From Sophie’s Beads’ Etsy shop:

Since I’ve always loved charm bracelets (my own charm collection requires a necklace), the idea of wearing my favorite book covers tickles my fancy.

Look at this idea for a gift for the ‘tween reader in your life:

Hmmm, maybe I should see if she can expand that bracelet to allow for nine book cover charms and add this to my Christmas list…