Tag: earrings

The Blame Game

If you ever lose/displace something, I have a full proof way to find the said item. It doesn’t involve retracing your steps, a Tile, St. Anthony, a pendulum or a psychic (although in desperation, I have used the above tactics in different drastic measures throughout the years). The sureproof way to find something that is lost, is to secretly, and righteously, and angrily blame someone else in your head for taking your item. That’s what you do. Name a thief. It never fails, right after you get your ire up as you sit steaming in your pitiful, indignant victim chair, your item shows up in some stupid place that you, yourself obviously and carelessly put the item in. When you discover the lost item, you are filled with embarrassment, and shame (for the blame), and also utter relief and joy all at the same time. It’s a whole sh%tstorm of feelings. As an example, yesterday I couldn’t find a $16 pair of earrings that I had recently purchased. They are not my favorite earrings. There is nothing particularly special or amazing about these earrings, but they are mine, and they were lost and I was pissed. I spent a chunk of time yesterday, going through garbage cans, recycle bins, scouring “my places” where I typically put my jewelry, to no avail. That’s when I remembered my trick. Whom should I blame for coming into my house and taking my $16 pair of earrings while stealthily leaving all other valuables firmly in place? The Fedex guy? A neighbor? The electrician from last year? Our first pet sitters from when we first moved here? And that’s when I remembered the most plausible entity to blame – Ralphie, our Labrador retriever. I noticed him munching on something crunchy the evening before and when I went to explore what he was eating, flipping through his piles of lips, he kept his mouth firmly shut, and so I had given up the quest of trying to see what he had been eating. Aha! Now I knew! What a naughty, guilty dog! Chewing on small metal earrings that weren’t his to devour! Is the diet kibble really that bad?! Just as I was giving Ralphie the evil eye, as I went to grab my eye drops out of the top drawer in my bathroom, I noticed two earrings that had obviously been swept into the drawer, just sitting there in the little dark corner of the drawer, looking up at me, almost with their own little evil eyes, as if to say, “What do you have to say for yourself, lady? How do you feel now?” And then, that strange, somewhat overwhelming mix of happy/bad feelings swept all over me, and I put my earrings on, and I hugged Ralphie and I gave him a treat. (and not the diet variety)

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Power of Earrings

I went to Target (otherwise known as Tar-jshay) with my daughter yesterday evening. I found a pair of earrings that I liked and I decided to put them on right away, at the cash register, because I had forgotten to wear earrings when I was getting ready. The earrings are long dangles with all different colored tassels. They are playful and fun and surprisingly, not heavy. When I put them on, our cashier exclaimed, “Oh yes, those are great! They make you look happy and young.” She then started stammering something about me actually “being young” and then I didn’t need anything to make me look young, and then she turned as red as her red Target shirt.

I just giggled and said, “That’s great. In that case, I’m never going to take them off.” I mean fashion earrings are a lot cheaper than a face lift or even some of these wrinkle creams on the market. Still, it was one of those moments in life when you notice a shift. Years ago, I was the young person giving stupid, backwards compliments to older people. (unintentionally and meant to be kind, of course) Often I would say, “Wow! You look great for your age!” Note to young people – just stop at “great.” Another thing not to say is “Wow! You look great for having four kids!” Again – just stop at “great”.

I would like to pretend that the comment didn’t bother me at all, but that would be a lie and I wouldn’t be writing about it this morning. Still, the cashier’s comment bothered me only slightly and more, it made me reflect. We put such emphasis on looking and being “young”, yet as I’ve aged, I’ve experienced many, many benefits to being older. Younger isn’t necessarily better. It’s just different. I took the earrings off last night before I went to bed. Maybe today I’ll wear one of the many vintage clip-on pairs that I have collected over the years. Instead of “young and happy”, perhaps the vintage earrings will make me look “older and sage.” I like having the option. It makes me feel free.

Earrings from God

Friends have asked me how I decide what I am going to write about every day.  Sometimes ideas swirl around in my head for a while.  Sometimes I sit down to write about something and for some reason, my blog becomes about something all together different than what I had planned to write about that morning.  I keep journals, and notebooks, and bookmarked pages of books that I like.  I write mostly from my experiences, all 47 years of them. When I think of something interesting to write about, I jot down the idea in a notebook.  Sometimes I have an idea of what I am going to write about and then a life experience happens that tells me that this experience is what I really need to write about.  Yesterday afternoon I had one of those experiences.

I go to my local grocery store a lot.  I have a big family.  When all of our kids were still at home and three of them were teen-aged boys, my grocery store was my “home away from home.”  Our grocery bill was right under the cost of our mortgage payment every month.  So yesterday, I was at my grocery store AGAIN and I got to chatting with the cashier.  She had on a beautiful pair of earrings.  They looked exotic.  They were dangles.  The earrings that she wore were discs with an intricate silver and dark blue design.  They were truly lovely.  I told the cashier how much I liked them.  She said, “Thank you.  A customer gave them to me.”

Now at this point, I got introspective.  I started thinking about the fact that I, myself, hadn’t ever really given anything to a cashier who waited on me, except maybe a smile.  I think that there was one time when I had already opened a bag of M&Ms in the store and my cashier mentioned that she had been on a double shift and had not eaten any lunch, so I told her to hold out her hand for some of my M&Ms.  That has been the extent of my giving to any store personnel waiting on me, so I admit that I was amazed and curious.  Luckily, she continued with the story.

“I complimented my customer’s earrings and my customer mentioned that she had gotten them on a special trip to Jordan.  When I was finished with the transaction, my customer removed her earrings quickly and clasped them into my hand.  She said that someone had blessed her that day and that it was her turn to pay it forward,” is how the cashier explained it to me.  The cashier then said that she was so shocked and so surprised that she really didn’t have much time to thank the lady who was already well on her way out of the store.  The cashier then went on to tell me that when she tells that story to the many people who have complimented her earrings, they have jokingly suggested that she should pass on the earrings to them as a blessing.  At that point, I told my cashier, “I LOVE, LOVE those earrings!!”

She knew that I was kidding and we laughed together.  I told her (while I was admittedly a little touched and misty) that the gift that she is passing on, is the telling of that wonderful, inspiring, warmhearted story.  I told her that I think that this is the way that the Universe works, using “angels on Earth.”  She said that the earrings came at a time that she had been kind of downhearted and really needed to be lifted up and that she saw them as a gift sent to her by God.  The cashier told me that she wears those earrings almost every single day.

People are mostly good.  There are small miracles happening around us every day if we make the point of looking around for them.  We have the capacity to be other people’s “angels on Earth” if we ask to be lead.  We all have these special stories that have happened to us just at the moment that we needed them to happen.  I’m so grateful for the reminder that I got of all of that goodness that surrounds us, just from my simple, routine stop for a gallon of milk at my local grocery store.