SPLINTERS OF THE PAST
I came across some words by George Bernard Shaw that justify my over-the-top chandelier. ‘If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you might as well let it dance.’ An exuberant chandelier with blue, red and green pieces of glass, brimming with old brooches and necklaces. It shines in magical prisms when the morning sun catches it and it brings me neverending pleasure.
For others, old costume jewellery; for me, a sparkling reminder of an exceptional woman’s life. It helps to fill the emptiness left by the daily phone call to my mother that I can no longer make.
My mother had 50 brooches! Multicoloured bright stones and pretty marcasite. They had graced the lapels of her wool, cashmere and camel-hair jackets and coats since the 1940s. Brooches in the shape of floral arrangements, orchids, birds, swans, cats and dogs. Some with her initial, L. There is one that says,
‘Mother’, and one of doves in olive wood that a friend brought her from Israel. Along with the brooches, my inheritance was strings of necklaces set with glittering stones, from the days when my mother regularly went to shows at the State Theatre and the opera.
After her death, I gave each granddaughter and daughter-inlaw a small memory tin containing a pendant, earrings, a lapel pin and a string of beads that they could put
