Story time: The prodigal necklace

Today’s newsletter is a bit different. I want to tell a story. if you saw this story on Threads, you can move right along, but I know that even people who follow me don’t see most of what I post, so I’m telling the story directly :)

Nearly 40 years ago I moved to NYC after college, and for the first nine months I lived there, I stayed with my grandmother in Forest Hills, Queens, in the house where my mom mostly grew up and where my grandmother had lived for ~40 years. I always thought Grandma was glamorous and very cosmopolitan. She and my grandfather and my mom (as a 3 month old) got out of Europe in 1940 just in time. It’s a long saga, which she never talked about. This is not that story.

I never met my grandfather, and my step-grandpa died when I was only 8, but Grandma had a boyfriend after that, who was around for a long time.

Both widowed (she, twice) they did not want to get married. Supposedly because of furniture.

She lived in her house, which was full of custom mid-century modern furniture, much of it quite minimalist and anything but overstuffed. Her boyfriend lived on the Upper West Side in a rent-controlled apartment full of antiques that he had acquired over a lifetime with his wife. I say “apartment,” but you can imagine it as a quite large space in an old pre-war building. It probably had as many bedrooms as my grandma’s house.

Neither wanted to compromise and live full time in the other’s space. with the other’s aesthetic. And perspectives on comfortable furniture.

Marriage wasn’t in the cards, but my grandma spent every Wednesday night and then every weekend in the city with him. Wednesday night was Opera night during the season, and if out of season, it was movie or Broadway night. She’d come home Thursday mornings with some story to tell. (My grandma famously called every Broadway show she didn’t actually enjoy, “very well done.” My grandma also famously didn’t like the original production of A Chorus Line because she didn’t really care about all their stories, why couldn’t they just dance?! I have many stories that could start, “My grandma famously…”)

The weekends were a bit more leisurely. They had brunch every Sunday at the same restaurant, a little place called Julia (I often joined them). And the boyfriend did the Sunday Times crossword…in pen.

They also traveled together twice a year, eventually settling into a routine of Switzerland in the summer and St. Croix in the winter once they got to the age where they just wanted to go somewhere they knew (and where they were known) and relax.

This boyfriend was actually a well known guy who invented the way they cut round diamonds in North America.

For real: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Tolkowsky).

When I posted this story on Threads at least a couple of people came out of the woodwork who had been in the jewelry business and knew of him. In fact, Kay Jewelers did a whole commercial talking about him, his “Modern Ideal-Cut Brilliant” round cut, and showing a black and white picture of a young him in the ad. (Which, being the Internet Age, I was able to find here.)

Since Marcel and Grandma were both Jewish they did not exchange Christmas gifts, but they did celebrate birthdays (hers was the day before mine actually). Since he was a gemologist he had his own stash of precious stones, so every year he had some custom piece of jewelry made for her.

The most memorable piece by far was a necklace. it looked sort of like a bolo tie, but the clasp did not move up and down. It was made of a heavy gold rope chain, and the clasp was a lion’s head with a crown of little diamonds, ruby eyes, and a diamond in its mouth. Grandma wore that necklace a lot. I hesitate to say every day, because I doubt that’s true, but my memory of my grandma is pretty much inextricable front that necklace.

Now here’s a twist: One year when grandma got back from one of their trips she could not find the necklace. She looked high and low and it was gone. She was devastated and felt terrible telling Marcel it was lost.

On her next birthday he gifted her with a replica of the original necklace. I know. 😭

Twist #2: The next year when packing for their annual trip, Grandma discovered the lining of one of her suitcases was torn and what should she find but the original necklace inside the lining.

She was so embarrassed, and she never told Marcel she had found the original! If I think about the timing, he probably wasn’t doing well by then, and that may have been their last trip together.

Now, after Marcel died my grandma went down hill pretty fast herself. Her doctors urged her to get hip and/or knee replacement because arthritis had just destroyed her joints, but she always said she was too old to do surgery. “Joke” was on her, because she lived another decade, but most of that time she was bedridden. She had in-home round the clock help from a lovely woman named Marjorie and her daughter. Marcy, who subbed in for Majorie on the weekends.

At some point my aunt came and took a bunch of my grandma’s fine jewelry back with her to DC to put in her safe.

Since my mom is not really a talk-about-it person, I have no idea what she and my aunt did after my grandma died in 2001 just a couple months shy of her 90th birthday (“90,” she would say, “now that sound really old.”) Since my grandma had two daughters, it made sense they would split the fine jewelry, including each getting a lion necklace.

20 years later (just two years ago and a couple of years after my stepdad died), when packing up my mom’s stuff to move to a retirement community, my sister made a similar call to move my mom’s collection of fine jewelry (including some we recognized as being from Grandma) to her home. But she found no lion necklace.

Twist #3: I asked my mom about it, and she did not remember either the necklace or my story. I asked my aunt. She said she indeed had a lion necklace, but didn’t remember there being a second one. My sister even asked Marjorie and she also did not remember this story about a second necklace.

I was flabbergasted. I mean, that is not the kind of story I would just dream up. How could no one know what I was taking about?

I didn’t believe I was making it up, so I thought perhaps it had gone missing (even been taken) maybe even before Grandma had died.

I was pretty bummed, but whaddya gonna do 🤷🏻‍♀️

Final plot twist: We went out for my birthday last week, and my sister gave me a cute little wristlet bag, with a box inside.

I opened it and inside was, you guessed it, the lion necklace!!! Wish I had a picture of my face when I realized it! I hadn’t seen it in probably 30-35 years, so it took me many seconds.

How? As part of moving my mom to a new assisted living facility (and realizing there’s no chance that moving back to the house will be an option), my sister has been going through the house, preparing to eventually sell it). She found the necklace a couple of weeks ago just sitting in a pouch in a random drawer. She didn’t tell mother sister who was there. She didn’t tell anyone. She’s been saving it to surprise me for my birthday…and I’ never knew she was so good at keeping a secret!!

What a great surprise. And I KNEW my story was REAL!!!! #Phew.

Oh, you’re wondering about the necklace? Here ‘tis:

The Prodigal Lion Necklace

And here’s my Grandma:

My grandma in NYC in the 50s probably, and her visa photo in 1940

Have you ever been the *only* one who remembers a family story? Did you feel like you were losing your mind too?

Latest from Optionality

Here’s my latest newsletter for Optionality, do you feel me?:

The Mental Tax of Being a Woman

And here are two Optionality events coming up quickly:

Watch us live today (Thursday 4/17) at 1PM as we interview Dr. Sophia Yem Counfer and Chief Medical Office of Pandia Health for #Conversationality. Our theme in April is Energy Management, and we’re talking about women’s health and how especially perimenopause and menopause can impact our energy and what to do about it. You can watch live on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Optionality4Life

Then next week we’re partnering with Aetheon for April’s member webinar. If you’ve either experienced or are dreading a potential layoff, the webinar on April 24th will speak to you. Namely, how to bounce back and manage your mental wellbeing in the face of this erratic economy:

APRIL WEBINAR: Rebuilding Confidence and Well-Being in a Layoff Culture

Hope to see you at one or both of these events.

That’s it for today. Until next time, please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts on any or all of the above. This is basically my blog now! And as always, I appreciate a share of Optionality and this newsletter.