Charmed Secrets

A secret is a piece of information that is to be trusted into the ears and head of a confidant and is information that is not to be seeped, that holds too much temptation to keep to ones self. A secret can bring much stress, conflict, guilt, and gossip. I feel like my charm bracelet holds many secrets; secret stories that belong to each, secret events and meanings given to me by others and a secret to be shared by me to many other people that I care about. I have given these charms for multiple holidays and life events, especially in the past years as I have become more stable in life both career, family and financially. I want to start collections for other people so they also can have wonderful stories and secrets on their wrist.

As I look at my Pandora charm bracelet I currently have five other Sterling silver charms that are oxidized. I remember the occasions that brought these charms to me and my wrist. They each hold their own special meaning and emotion. Soon my oldest niece will be graduating from high school, only one short year away. I am going to start gathering charms for her to have her own little, or large, Pandora Charm Bracelet. She has been admiring all the adult womens’ bracelets and watching with some envey. Her mother, my sister and I have discussed this in the past; I know that a perfect graduation gift will be her own Pandora bracelet.

One charm came from my parents for Christmas in recent years. I had started to give these charms to my sisters and sister in laws for special events. My mother knows all about them as she has watched my bracelet grow. She decided to give her three daughters and two daughters in laws these charms also. I remember how funny it was that she had five separate wrapped boxes with no specific names on them under the Christmas tree. As we all sat around the living room and continued to take turns opening our gifts on Christmas Eve, my mother announced that there would be a scattered gift. As we all looked up at her puzzled, hoping this was not the beginning of dementia, she tossed these five little wrapped boxes in the middle of the room and announced that it was first come first serve, each girl got one box! This scene was worse than a group of single women elbowing each other at a wedding dance to be that next single woman to catch a bouque of flowers and have her turn at the alter! So, we each dove in, landing on our bellies and using our pointy joints to get that perfect secretive wrapped box. We each tore open our gifts to discover, Tah-Dah, a Pandora charm. We each slowly revealed a sterling silver charm with oxidized markings. That was really fun, we all staked our claims on the different charms and we refused to share them with each other until we had memorized the markings and burned each detail into our memory banks. Only then were we willing to relinguish them into the hands of our competitors to view closely. We all felt like we got the ‘prettiest’ one. My mother was so ecstatic with her gift that I believe this tradition will be the new rage every year! We will certainly all start to wear multiple layers of clothing to serve as better protective padding for the next elbowing event of the coming Christmas year. At least I hope so.

I love Christmas because of the secrets of gifts and that all inclusive privilege of attempting to keep these secrets to yourself before the unwrapping, the burst of surprise, and of course of the birth of Christ. They can be parallel in comparison. In addition to my mothers own little inventive way of giving all the girls that ‘scattered gift’ idea above, my other sisters as well as I did purchase these charms for each other. Since there were multiple people to purchase for the sterling silver charms made the most financial sense. I was gifted the sterling silver with circular pattern charm from my older sister and her family. Now she was pretty smart because she just chose the same pattern for us all, she felt we were all in the same family and that charm resembled this similarity and could be a collective bond between us all. One of my sisters in laws gave me the sterling silver with cubic zirconia charm that I love because it fulfills my love of jeweled stones. My other sister gave me the sterling silver spacer charm, this little charm was so fitting and so sweet because my sister was still in college and her funds were very scarce. This little spacer was so meaningful because I knew she was working nights and weekends just to make ends meet in college. I was so honored that she scrimped and saved enough money to add that adorable little spacer to our charm bracelets that year. How sweet and thoughtful that really was.

Gardening – the green thumb theory, this is very secretive. People with green thumbs hold their little secrets of making their plants grow higher and blooms shine brighter in the same manner grandmothers hold secret recipies inside those tightly pursed lips. Another one of my sterling silver charms with oxidized markings has the image of rose buds on it. Before our recent move to a town where Pandora beads are not sold locally at any jewelry store; hence my discovery of Chains-and-Charms.com, we lived in the southwest and had settled there as newlyweds both so eager to begin life in couple land. We purchased our first home, a one story Pueblo style home; it was perfect for two young adults. The back yard was not done, it was full of sand, nothing but sand. We even had a close friend evaluate this ‘soil’ for nutrients, as my friend is from the mid-west where soil is rich and black. She was not shy to announce our ‘soil’ basically was less than adequate (she used more explicit wording though). My new husband and I took this opportunity to design our own landscape, I had always wanted rose bushes, and where I grew up nothing like this survived the winter and certainly never grew those flower shop roses that every woman hopes to receive a dozen of on Sweethearts day. After my husband and I worked every weekend for three months straight digging trenches to lay our own irrigation system, hauled in stinky cow manure by shovel and then mixed this by hand with real soil (the black and rich type that we now had to pay for), after staining our cement patio, laying sod, spraying for bugs and sweating in the hot sun. We finally got to buy plants and flowers. I had chosen seven, yes seven, rose bushes and they were so small and underdeveloped. Each one had a different color bud on it, or so the tag promised. After three months we planted those seven rose bushes. And grow, did they ever and by the next season these seven rose bushes grew taller than me (I am five feet nine inches tall). We just had welcomed into our home our first child, a baby boy, so small and sweet. We usually took a trip July 4th weekend, but given the age of our new son we decided to forgo an away vacation. That special holiday weekend we had a block party with our friends to celebrate our nation then headed home and got comfortable and to our yard for some relaxation. I was rocking my son on a chair on the cement patio observing all my beautiful rose bushes when my husband brought out some cool drinks with stirring sticks inside. My husband watched carefully and silently as I peered into my tropical drink and inside the ice cube was something frozen. My husband got up and took our son as I dug into my drink and inspected this ice cube. I popped that cube into my mouth to melt the ice quickly and soon all that was left was a sterling silver charm with rose bud details for me to spit out into the palm of my hand. Wow, that was a new way to receive a gift. My husband, Greg, felt the charm would be a small replacement for our annual trip that we missed and a nice little reminder of our rose bushes that we love.

In Laws – either a true blessing or a true curse. Thankfully, mine are true blessings. Another valued addition to my charm bracelet is my sterling silver charm with a squiggly pattern. This came to me by accident actually. It was intended to be a gift for my mother in law from my husband and I for her birthday gift. My mother in law is big into angels, loves them, believes in them, and holds faith for all of us. My husband had been buying her angel memorabilia for years and we brainstormed on something to give her that could be a different kind of collection; one that would not require additional space in her already full cabinet hutch. So, we purchased this charm as her first one to give her for her birthday. Well, when we were talking to her over the phone before mailing this charm gift, we subtly brought up jewelry and what she likes and does not like, well she admits that besides her watch she is not a fan of things on her wrists... Oops. We should have broached this subject earlier but did not. My husband thought that going back to angel memorabilia would be safer; he always liked my own guardian angel charm that was given to me by my sister after I had lived with her and my niece as their nanny. So, he choose that one for her on a necklace instead of the bracelet, he then gave me the initial Sterling silver Charm with a Squiggly Pattern for my bracelet. I had suggested just saving this initial charm for her until Christmas but was secretly pleased to keep it for myself; I liked the irregular pattern and thought it was fitting for my own life and bracelet. Well, my mother in law was very happy with her small smiling Guardian Angel Charm, she wears it often and has reported that it is small and light so she does not even know it is there most days. Since starting her own Charm Necklace, we have purchased her a couple different ones for other holidays. We had chosen the chicken charm in Sterling silver because my husbands’ family farmed when he was growing up and they had a lot of different animals and amazing stories to go with each animal group. The chicken was given to her for Christmas when all the kids were home with their own families. We gathered like most families do to celebrate the day with a lot of food, drinks, and gifts. When my mother in law got to her present from us, we left the charm in the original box, surrounded this with fake white feathers from the local craft store and put all of this into a larger box. She opened that box to find nothing but feathers, so she thought. She stopped searching for anything else, and she actually believed we had only given her a box of fake feathers! We encouraged her continue searching the feather box, she eventually landed her hand onto the charm box and opened it up to discover that small little chicken charm. She laughed her gleeful way and then had me add it to her charm necklace. She now had that guardian angel and a chicken charm hanging out around her neck. She told the whole town that story, it gets referenced to us whenever we visit and run into various friends. The third charm that we have given to my mother in law is the little sterling silver pig head charm. For her wedding anniversary my husband thought it would be hysterical to get that little pig head charm to commemerate all those years of farming with his father.

- Ann S.