Grandma Rosemary's jewelry drawer

The Duchess Necklace by Shabby Apple

Lost in Wonderland Necklace by Shabby Apple

My grandmother Rosemary let each of her granddaughters choose a cameo brooch from her jewelry drawer, which was something of a magical place, with boxes inside of boxes and twists and turns and gaudy costume baubles in one corner and the daintiest pearl necklace you've ever seen in another. I remember digging through the drawer as a child with my sister Lizzie, who covered her arms in bracelets up to her elbows. But there wasn't only jewelry in the drawer. Perhaps my favorite item was a pair of enormous, bug-like sunglasses that looked as if they had been worn by a movie star in the 1970s. My grandmother's jewelry drawer stands out in my mind against the backdrop of my childhood as a sort of magical world in which you could be lost and where hours passed in what seemed like minutes.

The two necklaces pictured above remind me of the cameo brooch I chose from the drawer several years ago, when my grandmother started giving away more and more of her jewelry. I came across the brooch while cleaning the other day, and it was a gentle reminder that this Wednesday would have been my grandmother's 88th birthday.