09/05/2006 09:47 +0100

When I was in my first year of college (a LONG time ago), I begged & begged for a scarab watch band - it was the "latest" thing! My parents were pretty darned good about getting us things we wanted for Christmas and, sure enough, on Christmas morning, I opened a long narrow box from Mom & Dad and inside was the most beautiful watch band made of scarabs of all different colors & shapes AND a new watch attached to it!! I had had my ears pierced in the spring of my senior year in high school so I thought I was the "cat's pajamas" as my Dad used to say. About 2 months after Christmas, my ears were itching and -well, I won't go into the gory details - suffice it to say, I had to take out my 10k gold studs and let my poor infected ear lobes heal & eventually grow over. It seems I was allergic to metal!! I thought it odd that I could still wear my watch and then - you guessed it! One day I woke up with tiny bumps on my wrist and in hours, I was clawing at them with gusto. I tried everything for months - I just didn't want to give up my beautiful new watch! But it was all in vain and for years, I was unable to wear jewelry on my hands or wrists or around my neck - especially in the summer when the perspiration (remember, women don't sweat, they perspire) would make it so much worse. I mourned my loss for years until I grew up some and finally decided to just accept the fact that I couldn't wear jewelry and get over it! During the 30 some odd years since my freshman days at William & Mary College, I tried everything - rhodium plated wedding & engagement rings, leather watch bands (I painted the clasp with fingernail polish), hypo-allergenic jewelry when it came out, and non-metal beads but everything had SOME metal somewhere and it always seemed to find its way to the most sensitive place on my wrist or neck.

The worst time I ever had was when I was in a hospital in Jackson, Miss for a week with an internal infection and on the 2nd day, I found tiny bumps under my hospital wrist band fastener, which was metal. I got a band-aid and put it under the wristband, congratulating myself on how smart I was. WRONG! In 2 more days, my wrist was on fire & it itched so bad I could hardly keep my fingernails off it. I ripped the band-aid off finally and there was a neat band-aid-shaped rash - everywhere the band-aid had touched was bright red with tiny bumps that felt like I had been bitten by a million mosquitos! We do live & learn, don't we?

After trying just about everything, I gave up until about 5 years ago when I discovered I could wear stainless steel and the search was on for a watch with stainless steel back & a band with a stainless clasp. It worked for awhile, but then the hot weather set in and I'd have to take off the watch for the summer.

About 6 months ago, I decided to try my hand at an online store for religious and inspirational gifts and then, in Feb. I opened a brick-and-mortar store in my little village in upstate New York. I discovered amber jewelry and the powerful celtic knots - especially the Trinity Knot which is a symbol of everlasting love as embodied by the grandmother, mother, & daughter in a family. It seemed to also fit the everlasting love of our heavenly Father, His Son and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity and so I adopted it as the signature piece of my store, The Trinity Marketplace. I found so much of the celtic symbolic knots fit with my imagery of the strength that comes from relationships with God and with each other, and my new line of jewelry expanded. The more I shopped and loaded pictures on my web site and put price tags on the pieces in my store, the more I needed to find something I could wear. I'm not a fancy or dressy person and I'd gotten so used to not wearing jewelry that I figured this renewed compulsion to deck myself out with rings and necklaces was an effort to return to my younger days. But, 3 years ago, I had a gastric by-pass and lost 150 pounds and for the 1st time since college, I could see my feet and bend over & tie my shoes. I felt attractive again and suddenly I wanted a nice necklace around my neck - I wanted a pearl ring and an amethyst anything (my birthstone)! When I opened the store and began to get beautiful jewelry for wholesale prices - right in my little hands - I figured out that I was responding to a deep need for something beautiful on my body. Through years of being overweight and unable to wear jewelry, I felt plain & drab as well as unattractive & awkward & just BIG! Suddenly jewelry looked so good on me that I decided I would put up with the itching and that I would be more careful about how long I wore things and I would wear a lot of stainless steel. 

It may well be, as Kacy Carr said in her message about jewelry, "X-Factor", that it has meaning beyond being glittery & exciting. I think it has meaning even beyond the traditions and history of the pieces themselves, as Kacy mentioned. For me, it was something that made me feel attractive as a young woman and the lack of it as I matured made me feel dull and incomplete somehow. As I have defeated the "tiny bump demon", I have found that for me, simple & tasteful jewelry that sparkles & glitters on my hands and around my neck (I still haven't re-pierced my ears & a horrible wrist injury has made my left arm unwelcoming to any jewelry so my watch lives on my right arm), even the carefully chosen pieces in my store and on my web site just somehow make me feel GOOD (RIGHT ON, KACY!).

One woman was looking at some new rings in my store one day and she picked up a Marcasite ring with something like awe on her face and she said with quiet excitement, "if I have a finger this fits, it's mine!" Now THAT's a woman who knows why she wears jewelry!!

By
Susan Bowman ©2006