Warm and cool. Spiky and smooth. The colors of rose petal and rose leaf.
Coral, the slow-growing reef left by the tiny houses of sea creatures. Jade, the super-hard stone honored in China. It’s the symbol of good luck, good health, happiness, longevity, peace and wealth. (To say nothing of its apparent power to resist evil spirits.) What a curious pair to represent the traditional and modern gifts for 35th wedding anniversaries.
Timothy was a masterly giver of jeweled gifts, especially for our anniversaries. Yes, plural: we celebrated two, you see. One anniversary was for the civil ceremony in the London Borough of Westminster registry office. We were attended only by a trusted friend who sneaked a long lunch break with me and a complete stranger who stepped in as a witness when the best man was lost in traffic. The second celebrated the jubilant ceremony-reception we held five days later in the Borough of Brooklyn. Family and friends crowded a friend-of-friend’s loft, singing and toasting our Christmas-time wedding.
In England, Tim found antique mother-of-pearl mahjong tiles repurposed to earrings and a set of Art Nouveau swirls of silver and onyx from the British Museum. After we moved to California, each anniversary saw ever-more unusual pieces. There were the hammered-silver fishes and the green amethyst clusters he commissioned from a jeweler he’d met while studying architecture in San Diego. And the splendid swoop of gold and pearls from the funky shop tucked beneath Nepenthe in Big Sur.
Timothy gave me coral for an anniversary in the late 1990s. Mediterranean coral jewelry was still popular all around the Bay of Naples in those days. That was before ecological concerns placed the distinctive red branches off-limits. We holidayed in Naples and Sorrento more than once in the years I worked for Thomson Cruises, usually in autumn. The year Timothy gave me the spiky red necklace, snug in its Neapolitan leather pouch, I didn’t know which impressed me more: His secret shopping expedition or the subsequent successful hiding of his treasure for four months.
35 years … sort of
Of course, there are no more anniversaries now. Timothy’s death in 2018 capped our counted anniversaries at 32. Is it more sad or more whimsical that that year I put a be-ribboned box under the Christmas tree, labeled Anniversary Not Xmas? (He did that once or twice when both dates fell on weeknights and little boxes were at risk of being swept up in the general melee of the holidays.)
That first December without him, I found a two pairs of earrings, one for each anniversary date. The first was a little pair of ‘broken’ hearts — the silver repaired with gold in the Japanese technique kintsugi — on that same San Diego jeweler’s website. Five days later, I opened a little canvas bag containing slim pieces of birch, inlaid with silver strips like wintry trees.
Last December, I found some simple amethyst solitaires, touched with the green of citrine for hope. I planned to wear them in the higher of two ear piercings. Instead, I cried when I found that the holes had closed up over years of neglect. After moping through January and February, I finally broke down and went to a local piercer to re-do them. He placed temporary steel hoops, warning me I’d need to return in six weeks so he could prise them open with pliers. And then it was March.
Jade for peace … of mind
I wonder whether Timothy would have given me jade this winter. He loved Chinese and Japanese sculpture and paintings. The sleek lines of a slim cat or bird in jade would doubtless have appealed. As it is, a tiny jade cat charm, my plain gold wedding band looped beside it on its black silk cord, is forever his. Just as I kept his wedding band on a chain around my neck the entirety of that first year without him.
There’s no little box beneath the tree tonight. The pandemic has rather sapped my inspiration, I suppose. Instead, I’ll hope the piercing shop will reopen soon, so I can finally wear last year’s jewels of hope.
Banner photo by starbright from Pixabay