A Love Affair with Earrings

I love jewelry.  Yes, I am a girl, and I love jewelry.  The problem is that I am VERY picky.  Especially with earrings. I'll pretty much love ANY necklace, bracelet, or ring.  But please don't try to buy me earrings.  Not to be rude, but I probably won't wear them.  I have been hooked on Ronald Pearson's "figure 8" earrings for years.  I have them in both 14K and sterling.  They are both a classic and a statement.  I absolutely love, love, love them.

Probably the main reason I love them so is because what they signify to me.  As a Columbia Junior Leaguer, I always admired them.  Silver or gold, I never cared.  But it wasn't until I finally left my ex-husband that fateful day in May of 2002 (No details, please.  We'll just say he loved to imbibe more than the average southern male... much more.), that I finally procured my own "figure 8s".  I can remember walking into Carol Saunder's Gallery like a new woman.  Celebrating my, and my young sons', freedom, I felt so liberated.  I bought both the gold and silver pair.  I deserved these earrings.  I earned them!

And so seven years later have passed.  I am married to my husband - an amazing man.  I have a wonderful life. And... I still am in love with my "figure 8s".

"I Can't Live Without My Pearls"... Are You a Member Too?

If someone asked me the one item that epitomizes class and understated elegance on a woman, it would have to be the simple strand of pearls.  I wear mine almost every day.  They make me feel like I'm just a little bit dressed up... even when I'm just going to the grocery store or running another errand.  I see others wearing their strand and I notice, "They're in the I can't live without my pearls club too."  I love the perfect roundness and smoothness of each one.  I love the fact that they start out as an imperfection.  An inconvenience.  An irritation.  And then, by sheer miracle, that piece of sand (or other fragment) goes through a metamorphosis to become a precious and priceless thing of beauty. 

Throughout high school and college, I either wore fake or my mother's strand (but only on special occasions).  I can remember Mama clasping her's around my neck before my debutante balls.  Wearing those, as well as her kid leather elbow-length gloves, made me feel a princess.

Finally, I received my own.  One gift my parents gave me when I graduated from college was a exquisite 18 inch strand of pure elegance.  A few other girls got cars.  A few got trips.  But I got pearls.  Finally.  I had my own to play with or finger whenever I was talking... or flirting!  I didn't have to borrow for special occasions... or plain old everyday.  This June baby (whose birthstone is the pearl!) was in heaven.

Sometimes I think about those cars that were given as graduation gifts twenty years ago.  Do those girls know where they are now?  Probably not.  But I know where my pearls are... circling my neck and will be for the next twenty years.  Because... I can't live without my pearls.