Way back when I was a little kid I got an allowance. As far back as I can remember my allowance began as a quarter a week. I was ecstatic when I got a raise to fifty cents a week and I began feeling as monetarily secure as a six-year-old could.
Unlike kids today that get upwards of $20 a week without stipulations, my fifty cents depended on doing chores. I set the table, made my bed, cleared the dishes off the table after dinner, cleaned my room and religiously brushed my teeth twice a day and later flossed. Not only did I learn the value of money, I developed a solid work ethic.
Later when I asked for a raise again I was told that my “salary” was supplemented by the tooth fairy. Since I still had a mouth full of baby teeth, I accepted that explanation from the “management” and didn’t attempt to negotiate a raise again for a while.
Later I DID get a raise to a dollar a week and delighted in my unlimited wealth. I wish times were still that simple.
My mom was the central figure in my life until her death at age 84. When we lost my dad she took on the role of both parents and we had an unshakable bond, regardless of the reluctance of the “management” to raise my allowance.
I saved my dollar a week allowance for what seemed like forever until I had amassed $17, which I saved to buy Christmas gifts for my mom. It took a huge amount of self-restraint and will power to save that much money because on the corner beside my elementary school was Atwell’s Candy Store. My friends and I went there after school and made major purchases with our allowances of wonderful things like Sugar Daddy’s, Sugar Babies, Double Bubble Gum and Zagnuts. I avoided Atwell’s until I felt my stash was secure enough to make sure my mom had a fantastic Christmas.
In my kid-mind I had no idea that $17 did not a fortune make but my mom did. I decided to shop for her Christmas gifts at Purcell’s, a women’s shop where my mom bought clothes when she needed them and could afford them. When she knew I would be shopping there for Christmas for her she called ahead and told them to let me buy a few items and to put the balance on her charge card. That was how I ended up with $50 worth of Christmas gifts for my mom for just $17 that wiped out my savings.
While I was shopping in Purcell’s I saw, for the very first time ever, Danskin colored tights (they were invented THAT long ago). That has nothing to do with this story … I just happened to remember it.
Anyway, my mom had a great Christmas that year and I had an even better one because I had made that possible for her … kind of.
As first grade kids my friends and I walked to and from school (in times that were much safer for kids than they are now). This was also before inflation and my “management” raised my allowance to a dollar a week. I was still struggling with life on a fifty cents a week shoestring.
We often stopped by Kresse’s on our way home and looked at toys and “live pets.” One day we also stopped at the jewelry counter where I had the next best thing to an epiphany … a vision. It was one of those moments when I was suddenly the only person in Kresse’s, angels could be heard humming on high and a bright and blinding light from heaven suddenly shone on something in the jewelry case … a pair of canary earrings. It was a movie-version moment and I was instantly in love.
Each earring was a gold-plated hoop like a bird cage swing and in each little swing sat a yellow and white canary with a golden beak. Those earrings were without doubt the most beautiful things I had seen in my six short years upon this planet. Right then and there … in Kresse’s … in the dwindling heavenly light from above … I decided to save my allowance to buy those phenomenal canary earrings for my mother. I had a clear visual of what they would look like on her earlobes, canaries swinging in their little swings as she walked.
While I was in the throes of saving my meager allowance in an attempt to save the $3.95 to buy those amazing earrings, I stopped by Kresse’s every day on my way home from school to make sure they were still there. When I had saved $4.00, I bought them.
I don’t remember if I saved the canaries for a special occasion or if I simply gave them to her “just because.” Whatever the reason or occasion my mom was obviously surprised and completely overjoyed … just as I had been when that imagined heavenly light shown so suddenly on them in the jewelry case at Kresse’s one afternoon after school.
As time passed and I noticed my mom never wore those wondrous canary earrings I asked her why not. On a couple of occasions she took them out of her jewelry box, still in their own small box and we looked at them together. To me they were still the most beautiful earrings I’d ever seen. She told me how much she loved them and how special they were to her and said she was saving them for a very special occasion and didn’t want to just wear them for every day… she didn’t want to lose them. Because they were so awesomely beautiful, I understood completely.
I don’t believe my mom ever DID wear them, which told me there just hadn’t been an occasion special enough that called for those uniquely amazing canary earrings.
A year or so ago I was looking for costume jewelry my husband and I could wear with our zombie pirate costumes for a Halloween Party and stumbled across a box of jewelry in my closet that had been my mom’s. I opened the box and glanced around inside. I saw a small white box and opened it. Inside, still resting on the original cotton they had rested upon for the past fifty years were that pair of canary earrings. Protected in their box, the canaries were still vividly yellow and white with very shiny gold beaks. When I lifted one out of the box, the canary swung back and forth on its gold-plated swing.
Standing in the closet, holding one canary earring in my hand, a rush of warm memories came back to me; the day in Kresse’s when I first saw those earrings, the never-ending penny-counting until I had finally saved $3.95 to make the purchase, and the look of surprise and love on my mom’s face when she opened that unexpected gift.
Looking down at that earring in my hand I realized just how gaudy it was and I suddenly understood why my mom never wore them and I laughed out loud. And then I cried because she had so gently spared my feelings and had so gently saved them among costume jewelry but safely kept in their original box, cotton intact.
I put the earring back in the box with its mate, put them back in the box with all that years-old costume jewelry and put them back on the shelf in the closet.
As I shut the closet door, I decided I’d keep saving them for just the most perfect occasion … because they were so lovely in so many ways on so many levels.
heimdalco 