Love in a locket

This is the locket I mentioned in my last post, the one I'd stashed in a long-forgotten "safe place" and finally found, thank goodness. It's dainty, smaller than a dime, and its value is entirely sentimental.

I wasn't aware of the locket's existence until about ten years ago, when I found a small package from my mother in the mailbox. Inside the package was a tiny box, and inside the box were the locket and this folded, handwritten note:


My mother was barely 19 when I was born. If she were alive today, having had children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I'm sure she'd be the first to tell you it isn't a good idea to let a baby chew on something small enough to be easily swallowed. Fortunately, we both survived the experience, and the tooth marks made the locket all the more precious to Mother.

It's special to me because it was special to her. First purchased 64 years ago, the locket traveled with her from Missouri to Kansas and back, then to Illinois and back, then to East Texas, where she kept it for another 40 years before she mailed it to me here in Louisiana. Here, it rested in its safe place until a week ago, when I sat on my bed, chatting with my daughter and hers, and sewed it into the lining of my granddaughter's wedding dress. The locket is her "something old" and has just been elevated to a new level of specialness.

As I write this, my granddaughter, shown laughing with me in this photo shot 23 years ago, is in Negril, Jamaica. She flew there earlier in the week, along with her fiancé, her parents, brothers, close friends, and the dress with the sewn-in locket. Today at 2:00 p.m., on a beautiful Jamaican beach, she will marry the fine young man who came into her life a couple of years ago and eased into our family as if he'd always been there. I don't know if it's possible for them to find more happiness than they've already brought to each other, but that's what I wish for them.

My granddaughter was concerned about the possibility of losing the locket, but I'm not worried at all. There are far worse places than the sands of Jamaica to end one's journeys.