When I opened the velvet box and saw a silver charm bracelet, my eyes widened.
“Where did you find Mom’s charm bracelet from Europe?”
My brother grinned.
“It’s a funny thing about siblings. We know things that no one else knows.
“When I saw this charm bracelet at the antique shop, I knew you’d love it.”
I peered closer at the tiny charms.
The colosseum from Rome, a gondola from Venice and the Eiffel tower from Paris caught my eye.
But we never went to Berlin that summer., so I didn’t recognize Brandenburg gate nor the silver bear. I frowned. “This isn’t Mom’s. Where is it?”
He shrugged. Maybe our younger brother knew. We hadn’t seen the jangly silver bracelet in the 21 years since she died.
A charm bracelet as a souvenir?
In 1970 when my mother used a year’s worth of teacher salary to launch our family on a 10-week camping trip through Europe, charm bracelets were popular.
All her friends who had gone to Europe before had such bracelets with tiny charms reflecting the countries they visited.
One charm per country.
In our case, we visited thirteen countries that summer.
“That’s all Mom and Michelle did, hunt for charms,” my brother explained to his wife and daughter.
“It was crazy,” I agreed. “We spent only one hour in Belgium,our sole purpose to find a charm.”
Bruges, Brussels, Flanders, the Lowlands, all ignored as we sought a jewelry store.
“In fact, the only reason we went to Lichtenstein, hours out of the way, was to buy a charm for the bracelet.”
We may have bought chocolate bars there as well.
Or a version of Pokemon?
It all rushed back, those searches for the right tiny object to represent a nation.
In the end, we resorted to buying whatever made sense and tossed out a limit.
So, we did have Rome’s Colosseum and the gondola. I’m pretty sure we had Big Ben for England and a windmill with operating sail for Holland.
The Little Mermaid statue from Copenhagen represented Denmark.
We also visited Munich!
As we wandered through tourists sites in all the countries, we admired the views, took in the history and seemingly climbed every church tower in Germany.
She must have bought a Leaning Tower of Pisa–because I remember my father and I both feeling tempted to step off the top. In 1970, the tower didn’t have a railing.
We were both shaking after he shouted at us to “get down, now!”
We stopped at tourist kiosks and shops hunting the charm that best represented our memories.
It had to be sterling silver–the only indulgence for my mom that summer–and it had to mean something to her.
Charming memories
Turning over this gift, I examine the cowbell.
The antique bracelet’s charm reads “Danmark.”
Mom’s had a clapper in it, too, but came from Norway.
It clatters and shines in the light–this one has an airplane.
That trip to Europe in 1970 was the first time my brothers and I rode on an airplane.
It’s not Mom’s, but it could be.
I’m going to call that youngest brother and see if he knows where the family’s silver memory is from that long ago trip.
But first, I’m going to dig up the diary I wrote that summer and really remember what it felt like to be tall, gawky young teenager with braces on her teeth who wore horn rimmed glasses.
That summer was memorable for a lot of reasons, but the most important one was that was the year I saw my mother as a person apart from her relationship-defining title “Mom.”
Of course I didn’t dare call the charm seeking woman Jeanette.
But when she put on that charm bracelet and watched it dance with memories, that’s who Mom really became: herself.
Thank you to my brother.
Tweetables
A European charm bracelet evokes memories. Click to Tweet
The surprise of Mom’s charm bracelet after 20 years. Click Tweet
Charming memories of Europe in a silver bracelet. Click to Tweet
Thoughts? Reactions? Lurker?