Pearl of Great Price
To my mom, on what would have been her 84th birthday! love, Marcy
For most of my childhood, the velvet blue box lay buried deep in my mom’s underwear drawer. It was shaped like an oyster, or for us Midwesterners, what passed for one.
Underneath a layer of silky slips, the jewelry box guarded its treasure. Sometimes when my nurse-mom worked the night shift at Silver Cross Hospital, I’d creep into her bedroom while my dad was napping on the living room couch. Sitting atop her dresser were items on permanent display---- a silver brush with the initials “IMD,” and the cerulean blue bottle of “Midnight in Paris,” the closest she came to visiting a foreign country.
Breathing heavily, I’d reach into my mom’s drawer, my hand diving underneath the sea of white silk to retrieve the object of my desire. Gingerly I opened the box and held the iridescent jewels against my girl-sized palm: a fine necklace of cultured pearls my dad had given my mom on their tenth anniversary. We kids were told that the pearls were the most expensive item in our working-class household, which could be pawned one day if we couldn’t pay rent.
Besides her Sunday pot roast recipe, my mom was determined to bequeath my sister and I her most precious objects on this earth: her pearl necklace and an exquisite Italian cameo my uncle had brought back from World War ll. Because I was the oldest, I got first choice. Much to my little sister’s chagrin, I chose the pearls.
When I was 26 and in love, I walked down the aisle wearing my mom’s string of pearls, which are supposed to bring a bride good luck.
Fast forward seven years. My husband and I had moved from New Jersey to Boston, awaiting the birth of our firstborn. One month before my due date, I was hospitalized with pre-eclampsia, a hypertensive condition potentially fatal for mother and child unless strict bed rest is followed. When an amniocentesis confirmed that my baby’s lungs were fully developed, my doctor recommended that labor be induced.
Just two days before Abby’s birth, our apartment in a rapidly gentrifying Boston neighborhood was vandalized. Among the items stolen were my mom’s pearls. At least this burglar had good taste. With my psyche entirely focused on having a healthy baby, not even a brazen mid-day break-in could rattle my nerves.
When Abby finally made her way into this world, safely, I was elated. My obstetrician, a gentle Indian woman who would examine me draped in a purple sari, proclaimed that I now had my own "pearl." She wasn’t far off in her assessment.
The Romans’ word for pearl was “margarita,” signifying something of great value, or a cherished possession, or a child
.I was hoping to bequeath my mom’s pearls to my own daughter. Yet peering into her clear blue eyes, I knew that my pearls were never really lost.