My birthday happened over a month ago. Before my birthday, I had to tell people not to get me any jewelry for my birthday. I figured it was reasonable for kind, well-intentioned friends and family to want to get me jewelry for my birthday since all my jewelry was stolen, except for a few pieces I had been too lazy to put away & what I was wearing the day my house was robbed.
Truth was, jewelry was the last thing I wanted. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why at the time. But some disjointed (and what looks like irrational feelings, unless you’ve gone through something like this) were things like:
- I don’t deserve to have new jewelry. I couldn’t even take care of / hold on to the jewelry I had.
- You can’t replace the sentimental value of what I had with some “token” piece of shiny new jewelry. You can’t replace the tarnished cameo necklace that was my grandmothers. You can’t replace the bead necklace I spent hours making with my mother. You can’t replace the necklace I bought on vacation with friends, the one good-find souvenir among all the things we looked at that fit my tastes so well it practically screamed my name. You can’t replace that with something you spent 20 minutes shopping for.
- I don’t want to have new jewelry. If I don’t have anything, it can’t be taken away from me.
- And the one that seems to make the least sense: part of me just felt angry at jewelry.
Easter weekend (a couple weeks ago) was the first time I’ve seen my older brother, who lives 2 states away, since my birthday. So he gave me my birthday present then. He gave me a pair of earrings. When I first saw what it was, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel. But I had none of those bad feelings. And it had everything to do with where he got them, and the story behind it:
About 5 years ago I went with my brother and a group from his church in Chicago on Habitat for Humanity’s annual Jimmy Carter Work Project, which was in Mexico that year.
I didn’t know that my brother had bought a couple of things, including a pair of earrings, on that trip as thank you gifts for friends of his back home who were going to be helping him out with some things. In the end, one of the friends was unable to help out and did not feel right accepting the gift.
So my brother held onto the earrings all this time, not sure what to eventually do with them.
And as he told me this story, I sensed he felt bad about it, as if admitting to re-gifting. Meanwhile, the story made a good gift feel like an even better gift. Any jewelry I had bought on vacation in Mexico was gone. What he gave me was not only from Mexico, but more importantly I was with him on the same trip when he bought it. Even though it wasn’t bought for me at the time, I felt like maybe, somehow, it was meant for me all along. To make me feel better about jewelry again. If I’d bought them myself, or he’d given them to me a few months after the trip, I wouldn’t have them anymore now. The timing was right.
So I figured it out. I think that I didn’t want to replace things I once had – things with good stories behind them - with something where the story behind it is “I got this because my jewelry was stolen.” I can’t have things with such a long, sad, bitter, angry story behind it. I need a better story than that.
