Linked by the Sea.....

My mother's natural Blue Gray pearls were actually her mothers pearls and her grandmother's and great grandmothers before her. They are beautiful and longer than opera length, their three strands wrapped around my neck still lay gently beyond my breasts.  Even at their advanced age they are lustrous still and smell a bit like the essence of all of the women who have loved them. 

They are the most beautiful color, silvery blue like the sea before a storm and I've always wondered about the patience of the divers that found them. Because they are natural pearls and at least 120 years old there is a whole other lineage of women that I'm linked to through them, Free Divers who often risked their lives to obtain these coveted beauties. There was no other way to collect pearls before the 20th century and sometimes the divers had to go as deep as 40 to 125 feet into the sea and because of the extremely fickle nature of natural pearl growth, any pearls found were extremely rare. To harvest the pearls that I now wear, women that I've never met had to brave uncertain tides, dangerous creatures and possible hypothermia. More important even than the stories of these pearls are the untold stories that I will never know, but that I can feel. Women who had no other way to feed themselves became pearl divers and were probably paid what amounted to a pennies to fashionably adorn my my grandmothers. I cannot wear them ever without acknowledging their true cost. 

That being said....they are among the most sensuous things that I own, probably because of the natures of the women who wore them before me.  I don't know anything of my great grandmother's except that they wore these to the operas and ballets and fancy balls that they frequented. 

My grandmother who was dead before I was born but who I am said to most resemble wore them in a slightly different fashion. She was a painter, one of the original women in a famous New York City artists colony at the turn of the century, sensuous and very provocative, at least until she married my grandfather, a kind gentleman farmer who was probably a very settling influence. In this highly unorthodox and very worn sepia photograph there is a woman that I could recognize as myself wrapped naked in a bearskin rug and holding a long cigarette holder. She is draped in pearls.....my pearls. 

When she died, my mother inherited them and wore them often. She would always wear them draped against gray silk and satin, nestled against her very ample chest. When I miss her the most, I go to my jewelry box and put them on. They still smell of her and it's a wonderful fragrance, lighthearted and giddy like the woman that she was when she was having fun being herself, always the belle of the ball.

Someday, I will hopefully have a granddaughter of my own to give them to. I will savor that moment and pass them on with all of the stories. They say that pearls contain the essence of the souls of all who have worn them. In that case I am truly blessed. The women in my family were and are all wild and wonderful and the pearls seem to take on the very wild  nature of us all.  I remember my mother wearing them once when I accidentally walked into my fathers studio late at night....she was lying like a beautiful odalisque and he was painting her. It was quiet and the canvas shone like his adoration. I've never forgotten that moment and neither have the pearls. They share their stories with me andI'm busy creating my own stories with them and those will be for another time.....