Hardware Store Necklaces

I got on the subway at the end of a workday, and sat down. A woman was sitting across from me, scrolling through her phone. She was well-dressed, maybe on her way to some kind of event, not on the way home from work. Lipstick sharp. Blue dress with a jacket in a slightly different shade of blue. Blue nail polish. A graphic animal-ish print purse. Oversized glasses, a dark bob.

And a statement necklace.

The necklace fascinated me. The necklace is why I surreptiously took her picture. Look at it! It's a piece of cheap hardware with a couple of carabiners and a lenght of chunky chain. You could go to the hardware store and pick up all the bits you need to make your own.

 Hitching Ring: 

 

Carabiners:

 

 Chain: 

 

What it reminded me of was Anni Albers. Albers was a textile artist and printmaker, who made a number of necklaces out of grosgrain ribbon and plain flat washers. The first time I ever saw one of the necklaces on exhibit, I detoured home past the hardware store and bought a pack of washers, knowing that I had grosgrain at home. It's easy to do - but if you don't have the desire to figure it out yourself, the Albers Foundation helpfully sells a kit. Who needs Tiffany when the hardware store has everything?

Amsonia

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

T.S. Eliot (from Four Quartets)

My sister died last week.

It wasn’t a surprise; she had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer eight and a half years previously. But she had good medical care, and her decline was slow and mostly manageable. Until it wasn’t, and she had a sudden and precipitous decline. On Saturday, she was out at a local ballet performance. On Sunday, she was in the emergency room. Monday, hospice was called in, and she died on Thursday. Her wife and her kids and I were with her at the end; hospice provided exemplary care.

But oh, the ache.

A couple of days after she died, I opened the newspaper and a movie review jumped off the page at me. I’m not a huge movie-goer but Sarah was, and the last time I’d been in a movie theater was a couple of months ago, with her. [We saw Black Bag, and we were the ONLY people in the theater.] So – in part as a way to honor Sarah’s love for moviegoing – my daughter and I set off for a late afternoon showing of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. And it was perfect and Sarah would have loved it. It’s half in French, half in English. It’s set in Paris (with a lot at Shakespeare & Company) and also in an English country manor house turned writing retreat. It has a Mr. Darcy, it has spitting llamas, and who doesn’t love a movie in which *the* Frederick Wiseman has a cameo.

Somewhere along the line, one character quotes Wordsworth at another: “that best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”

In my head, I re-gendered the quote, thinking of the little acts of kindness and love carried out by my sister.

Go forth with love. See a movie, plant a perennial, bake some breadsticks, mail a postcard. Advocate for the voiceless, volunteer with a local organzation. All of these are the little acts that a good person does, day in and day out. And these little acts into the future honor the past.

Go forth with love.