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Last weekend I had the opportunity to go to Frankfort, my hometown, to visit my family. However, as it turned out, on Saturday both of my parents and younger sister were busy and none of my childhood friends were visiting home from college. Immediately, I made the deadset decision on who I would spend my day with- my grandma. Despite our daily texts to one another, it had been several weeks since I had seen her and she had recently sent me a message suggesting we make a craft incorporating old family heirlooms, specifically antique jewelry, whenever the chance came up. I figured what better to do than this craft she had so excitedly mentioned weeks before. It sounded interesting and there certainly wasn’t much else to do amid the pandemic and biting cold weather.
When I arrived at her house, she had already pulled several cardboard boxes from her attic. I sat in the floor, beginning to open the boxes, while she continued to poke around in every closet and cabinet, searching for anything else she could possibly find. Together, we sorted through our findings: jewelry that belonged to several generations (as far back as my fifth-great grandmother), old love letters, vintage postcards from cross-country roadtrips, a collection of spoons, my great-grandaddy’s dog tags from WWII, newspaper clippings, and film rolls in their original canisters. My grandma even managed to pull out her wedding dress she wore when she was just sixteen, carefully fluffing the still-pristine tulle and lace.
Unboxing these precious items proved to be a special experience for the both of us as I was eagerly learning about certain people and stories in my family for the first time and my grandma was emotionally recounting and reminiscing upon memories she was able to experience as a young child through well up into her adulthood.
After several laughs were shared and a couple tears were shed, my grandma snapped back into her classic “determined to finish what we started” mode and set out for us to start our craft. Very adamantly, she instructed me to Google “antique jewelry art”. (For those of you unfamiliar with what this is, much like myself up until recently, antique jewelry art is the composition of framed 3D collages using small pieces of jewelry such as beads, rings, watch faces, and broaches to create floral, bird, butterfly, and heart-shaped designs, among others.) Admittedly, nearly every search result was beautiful, but my grandma and I both felt like we could do something even more unique. After bouncing a few ideas back and forth, we came to the conclusion to adhere the jewelry to the frames of old mirrors.
Once we had both of our mirrors cleaned off and our jewelry gathered and sorted, we began de-stringing century-old pearl necklaces, snapping the pins off the backs of broaches, and separating earrings from their lifelong matching pairs. To me, this felt so wrong. I feared years of sentiment going down the drain as I so effortlessly bent and twisted the delicate pieces of my great-great-great grandmother’s jewelry and cut apart dainty chain-linked bracelets gifted to my great-great grandmother by past lovers. As if all at once, my excitement to complete this project with my grandma came to a halt. This seemed to teeter on the edge of disrespect for these beloved objects and their rich backstories.
My grandma noticed the reservation smeared across my face and pat my hand. “It’s just stuff, yanno. You can’t take it all with you when you’re gone,” she calmly said. I carefully processed this. As weird as it was, considering the value these objects held, she was right- it’s just stuff. My grandma continued her thought, stating, “One of my good friends said that to me when she was going through her mother’s belongings after she had passed. It’s impossible to keep everything, so she only kept a few things of her mother’s that were special to her. And that’s what I’ve done too. But hiding away boxes of old stuff we don’t even look at or wear, doesn’t do anyone any good. I’d much rather us make something special and fun. We can hang these mirrors up, and everytime we use them, we’ll be reminded of all the memories and stories tied to the generations of people before us, who treasured these jewelry pieces.”
Despite this being a simple sentiment, I was stunned by how profound it was and how uncharacteristically calm my grandma was about taking pliers to real gold necklaces and hot glue guns to authentic pearls. Never did I think my own grandmother would be okay with “destroying” family heirlooms, let alone take part in it. But again, she was right. While these objects held both monetary and sentimental value, it wasn’t about face value. It wasn’t about the materialism of it. The sentiment was not being stripped away and the memories were not being deconstructed. By doing this craft project together, I was able to create a lasting memory with my grandma that I will forever cherish. She not only taught me a priceless lesson and entertained me with stories from years past, but helped me create a story that I can pass down along with my newly decorated mirror to generations to come after me. And for that, I am grateful.
Julia Blackburn is a McConnell Scholar in the class of 2023. She is studying biology, visual arts, and political science at the University of Louisville.