My daughter sent earrings and a bracelet on Saturday. Normally I would put them away and wait for a special occasion. No way! My husband doesn’t like it, but I am admitting that I am aging. Because of that, I don’t want to wait to do anything anymore. I want to wear all of my pretty clothes and jewelry right here and right now. It may be aging, it may not be.
I heard a story about a man sadly talking about his wife. After her funeral he was going through her dresser drawers and he found a beautiful new night gown delicately laced and obviously expensive. It made him cry because he knew that she had been saving the night gown for a special occasion. I totally understand her. I grew up in a house with six other kids. If you wanted to eat, you came to dinner early, if you wanted a new dress for school, you saved your money from scavenging for pop bottles and redeeming them at .03 cents a piece. If you got something nice, it was to be savored and adored, not to be touched and roughed up. Anything nice had to be hidden and watched over. Because luxuries were hard earned, they were saved…
The habit is hard to break. You can gain financial superiority and you will still be holding that lace nightgown in the original box and you do not want to use it. Once you use it, it is no longer special. Yes, yes, that feeling of specialness that comes with the gift or the new item. Feeling special can come in a box with tissue and ribbon. That is the other reason for hanging on to these things: if you have never had much attention, a little bit of attention must be savored and again, adored. As happens so often with these beliefs that are leftover from childhood, you may not even be aware that they are there until someone tells you a story, as did happen with me.
It’s been happening with everything. The china and the crystal were never to be touched unless there was company – but when company came over they wanted to run around and have fun; we always used paper plates. So now I want to serve dinner on china, just for us – for no other reason – just for us. Then I think about being special and now I see, if I am to be special, I must make it happen. I must be a special me, I must use my nice things, I must appreciate the jewelry my daughter sent to me on Saturday. It is me who must make these things happen. Then I must trust that they can and they will happen again. I must realize that I cannot cling to the specialness of that jewelry delivery on Saturday. It is over, that special moment came and then it went. I will get another moment like that – and in the meantime, I have learned that I must appreciate such moments while they are happening.