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The most important piece of jewelry I have is so precious to me I would never take it out of the house. It is a silver charm bracelet handed down to me by mother. She was stationed in Pearl Harbor during WWII and served as an army nurse assigned to care for Japanese prisoners of war, as well as Japanese Americans in internment camps. Every year on Christmas and her birthday, marvelous presents would arrive in our mailbox for my mother at our home in Detroit. The mailman delivered gifts from the people my mother had cared for during her years in the service. There would be carved jade pieces, ivory chopsticks, rice paper tablets, chensongs, kimonos, ceramic statues and bamboo-framed woodcuts depicting simple scenes from Asian life. My mother retired from the army as Lt. Col after a tour of duty as a triage nurse in the Korean War. Nonetheless, these heartfelt offerings from her former patients continually landed in her lap until 1979, a full 35 years after the war. It hits me over and over again how profound those relationships must have been for the ties to hold that long.
The year 1979 holds in my memory because it was the year Mr. Akahara Ishi sent my mother a token of their life-long friendship - a silver charm bracelet with a working abacus and rickshaw, among the many exquisite hand crafted charms, and even an oyster that opened to reveal a pearl. My sisters and I looked at it in wonder and took our turns wearing it in the mirror imagining my mother's life, the life she had before us, and the life we would live inspired by the travels she'd had. I still remember the joy in mom's eyes when she watched us transform into little ladies and powerful empresses under the spell of the charm bracelet. My mother cherished that gift dearly and wore it to every fancy dinner and formal wedding she went to for the rest of her life.
I was the lucky one of my three sisters to inherit the bracelet. Like my mother, I cherish the sight of my two little girls trying it on and diving into their imaginations when we dress up and play tea party around the table on lazy afternoons.
-Veronica Webb is a model, actress, writer, journalist and TV personality Print this post
