A Present from My Mommy

I went to Boston with the boys last week to visit my parents and my brother and his family, and took the boys with me.  Tomorrow is my 46th birthday, (yes, that’s right, one year closer to death), and my mom presented me with a birthday present.

My great grandmother came to America from Russia, and apparently she had a large gold heart locket that she brought with her.  By the time my mom saw it, it was broken, but she thought it would be cool to get me a similar locket as a keepsake, to keep pictures of my family inside.

This is an amazing present in so many ways.  First – it probably took my mom a thousand years to find the right locket.  If it were me, I’d go on the internet and order the first thing that looked decent.  My mom doesn’t roll that way.  I’m sure she visited 12 different jewelry stores to find the perfect locket at the perfect price, with the perfect length chain.

My mom arranged my entire wedding while I was an ungrateful twirp of a med student in North Carolina.  She listened to a hundred bands and sampled a zillion appetizers.  When she called me for my opinion, I would be completely obnoxious.  “Mom, I’ve got work to do!” I’d whine.  “Pick whatever you want!  I don’t care!”  Ugh.  I now cringe at my revolting attitude.  Where are time machines when you need them?

My mom gave me this necklace in Boston.

She told the story of her mom’s necklace from Russia.  She showed me that the chain had a stamp that said it was 14K gold.  Then we looked for the stamp on the locket.  We couldn’t find it.  This really upset my mom.

“I don’t want it to turn on you!” she said.

Could necklaces turn on a person?  If you weren’t nice to your locket, could it grow teeth and bite you?  Or, would it start insulting you, saying things like, “Your neck smells”?  I assured my mom that if my necklace turned on me, I’d step on it.

“No, you idiot,” she said.  “If it’s not gold, the coating will come off, and the locket could turn your neck green.”

“I’m sure my neck wouldn’t be permanently green,” I reassured her.

Me with my necklace before my neck turns green:

The happy ending to my story is that I took the locket to a jeweler to be engraved, and they found the 14K stamp in the locket.  It will never turn on me.  I called my mom to tell her.  She was busy gulping down Maalox after my visit.

Here’s my mom thinking, “Thank God, she’s gone!  I need a drink!”

I love my mommy.