...and so, we incorporate the old parts of our lives in with the new. This is as it should be. Allow me to explain my progression.
When I was ten or eleven, my sister got her ears pierced. I didn't really want to follow suit until my mom (secretly encouraging me, I think) showed me some of her old earrings. Among the others I spotted them. Blue snowflakes painted on white ceramic studs. I thought they were the most beautiful earrings I could ever imagine wearing. So I asked to get my ears pierced, so that I could. My mom tried to explain that I wouldn't be able to wear them for a long time, but I didn't care. I asked if I could have them, for when my ears healed and I could wear them, and my mom, being the kind soul she is, said yes.
It was awful. I did everything that the person at the pharmacy had told me to (that's where silly little girls who didn't get their ears pierced before they left the hospital go, when they're in Spain) but they just would. NOT. heal. Not all the way. There were constantly alternating streams of blood, gunk, and gore coming out of my poor earlobes. After... I think six months? - something like that - I abandoned the attempt and allowed them to grow over, for years. The one or two pairs that my parents had bought me over Christmas, in anticipation, were put away, along with the beautiful snowflake earrings.
Fast-forward to college. I finally decided that, in order to look more like a grown-up (since apparently my face tends to fool people into thinking I'm a babe in arms), I needed to get my ears re-pierced - which I did. And, bolstered by assurances of the piercing girl that if I just refrained from bathing my earlobes in irritants like alcohol (which the pharmacist had told me to do... silly), I slogged through the salt-water baths and some very swollen periods, and minor infections that turned one earlobe grey, until finally my body gave up and graciously healed over into some very nice holes. Meanwhile, I became entranced with earrings: especially ones that dangled. In my opinion, if it didn't swing, it wasn't worthwhile, and I amassed a nice little collection. I did find the old earrings, but as I didn't much care for studs, I just transferred them onto a card along with some other odds and ends so they would all stay together and put them away again.
Fast-forward to now. Tonight, I re-discovered those old snowflakes. I realize now that though my ten-year-old self loved them truly, they're really not that spectacular. More importantly, I discovered a pair of gold knots that my parents got for me that Christmas, years ago. They are perfect, and very pretty and I intend to enjoy them immensely.
Interestingly, or grossly (you might even say symbolically), they still had gunk on them from when I tried to wear them the first time around, so I got to wash them clean.
And I guess what I'm saying is that it feels nice to take the good parts of our past, dust them off, and make them part of our selves and our lives as we go. With the incorporation, the memory is revived. My parents supported my goals in life, and they bought me a gift to show me that they loved me. So what if I didn't get to use it 'til years later? They're not just random thing I thought was pretty and bought at Target - they're not empty like that. They are earrings that my mother saw and liked and thought would look good on her daughter. I remember her telling me so.
This story is as it should be.
over 'n out.
E.O.
