Earrings from Ukraine

My mother was never a glamorous person. Not that she lacked beauty or elegance. She was always beautiful, always poised, always professional, but she never cared much for diamonds or gold. Instead, she wore the simplest pair of earrings. She brought them with her across the ocean from Ukraine. I do not know exactly why those were the ones she chose, but I sometimes think that when women immigrate, they are not choosing only for themselves. They are packing children’s clothes, documents, practical things, and the few belongings a family can carry. There is not always room for sentiment. Maybe those earrings were simply the small piece of herself she had space to bring.

They became part of her daily life. It did not take my father long to learn that buying her jewelry was a wasted effort. Nothing shiny or expensive could compete with those small, familiar earrings. I sometimes wonder if they reminded her of home. Maybe they were more than just jewelry. Maybe they were a small, steady piece of the life she had left behind, something no new purchase, no foreign imitation, could ever truly replace.

I remember the year she lost one of them. It felt strangely significant, as if it marked the end of something. I even wondered, would this be the start of a new era? Would my mother finally wear something different? But a few years later, during a visit to Ukraine, she somehow found another pair, almost exactly the same. It felt like something magical. As if home, for a brief moment, had reached back out to her and returned a piece of itself.

Now the earrings are kept safe in a small jewelry box that I guard like Cerberus. With the war, another lost pair would surely never be replaced. They feel even more precious now, not because they are rare or valuable in any ordinary sense, but because they carry something fragile and presently out of reach.

Thank you, Mama, for everything. For: Mama S.

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