About 15 years ago when the Grandparents Laird went to Australia, they brought all us girls back opals. Sister and I both got necklaces and Mom got a ring. When Mom came down to take care of me after surgery, she mentioned that she had recently re-discovered her ring and has been wearing it. I remembered how I had looked and looked and looked for my opal necklace the last few times we were in Iowa, and never found it.
On Saturday last week, right before we girls were going to go out and pick black raspberries, Sister was all up in arms about the fact that it was wet and cold outside, and that she’d likely get her clothes all wrecked. So I suggested she go look in the dresser in the blue room upstairs where Joey and I were staying. (I keep a homely pair of cow flannel pajamas in there to keep me warm on cold Iowa nights when we are at home.)
“There’s nothing in there,” Sister said.
“I bet there is,” I told her.
We went upstairs and began opening drawers. She was right, the first two were empty. Upon opening the third drawer, though, I gasped.
“Oh.My.Gosh. Where did this stuff come from?”
Inside the drawer was my old George Washington doll, a backpack full of Boundary Waters clothes, my poster of the Istanbul skyline, my plaid wool purse, and…MY OPAL NECKLACE.
“I have been looking for this since before I went to college!” I gasped.
“OH! Mine is broken,” Sister wailed. “Plus I always liked yours better.”
“That’s funny, I always liked YOURS better!”
I happily and carefully put my opal and its box in the suitcase that was coming back to Texas with us, and Sister and I began to dig through the backpack with Boundary Waters clothes to find something suitable for Sister to wear.
We wound up finding many things, so soon Sister was suited up in my junkiest of lounge clothes, and Laura was wearing my green Eddie Bauer thermal.
After picking berries, we all wound up in the blue room again, going through boxes of our old-timey things and memories, reading old journal entries from elementary school and laughing, looking at favorite old stuffed animals. Mine were all named logical things like Pinky (a pink bear), Sad Sam (that was his brand name), Mouse (a mouse) and Teddy (a musical teddy bear).
We also all found read my depressing poems I wrote in high school. They’re not bad, just all very depressing. “If I had known about these I would have worried about you,” Mom said.
“But Mom, I wrote them for Creative Writing class. And plus, every teenager is required to write depressing poems. It’s how it goes.”
“I suppose,” said Mom. But I could tell she was unconvinced.
“On the whole I was a very well-adjusted teenager, Mom. Really these poems are the only gloomy parts. Every teenager has to have some gloom, plus cheery poems are really cheesy and lame.”
Mom still looked uncertain, Sister agreed with me, and we all decided to move on to Sister’s boxes.
Sister was on the hunt for her opal. “I know it’s in here somewhere,” she said. She dug and dug through her boxes, getting distracted many times by the collection of garnets and small things she had saved.
Then – success.
“I FOUND IT!” She yelled. “Do you think I could get it re-set? The setting broke on the gym floor at church a long time ago but the opal is still fine.”
We were unsure if she could get it reset or not.
What I couldn’t figure out, though, is how all of my Boundary Waters stuff, the poster, the purse and my opal got in the drawer in the blue room in the first place. We had used that whole dresser at Thanksgiving, and none of it was there then. I asked Mom, who knows almost everything about the contents of drawers in her house.
“Oh,” she said, “The Kid found all that in the bottom drawer of his dresser and wanted to clean it out. I told him he could put it up here.”
The Kid’s dresser used to be my dresser, so it makes sense.
In any case, we had fun reliving memories, reading depressing poems, convincing Mom that I wasn’t an angst-filled teenager, and FINDING OUR OPALS.
I’m wearing mine today, for the first time in over ten years.
Thanks Grandparents Laird!
