All My Fancy Painted

I gave her one, they gave him two,
You gave us three or more,
They all returned from him to you,
Though they were mine before.

The White Rabbit's Evidence
Lewis Carroll

When I was very small I had a few jewels.
Two necklaces.
Two rings.
Two pins.
I believe the symmetry was accidental.
I don't remember ever wearing any of them, except the rings.

One of the necklaces was a pearl on a gold chain. Drilled through the middle and hanging on a gold pin with a tiny gold disk for the pearl to sit its little round bottom on. I liked to carry it around in my mouth, rolling the pearl just behind my front teeth and the chain hanging out, swinging, through my closed lips.
Pearls like to be sucked on. And kept clean. It was very clean.

One of the pins was a little gold poodle dog, black enamel with a bit of white detail. It had a foursquare, sprightly, upright carriage and a tam o'shanter on its head. Ruby for an eye (only one, my dog was posing in profile), two tiny pearls in its hat. I knew the ruby and pearls were real. All my jewels were real. Who wears pearls in their hat?
The other pin, also gold, was a fruit. Plum? With two little leaves and pinkish paint. Soft pink. Dusty pink.
These pins were very small. The dog, maybe an inch and half in its longest dimension and the plum maybe an inch. I often see dog pins of a similar feel and vintage to mine, but almost never as nice. Once though, I saw one exactly like mine but missing its eye. The plum and the dog are the only jewels from my tiny girlhood I have left.

One of the rings was a plain silver band, very narrow, with a flower worked onto it so that the flower was growing sideways on my finger, the two little leaves sticking out above and below the band, one toward my fingernail and one toward my knuckle. The flower itself, the bloom, was five minute petals and an eensy spherical center. Whenever I see a ring even somewhat like this one I buy it. Or think for a long time about buying it. But I have never seen one much like it, not really, though I have seen a lot of little silver rings. A ton, maybe.
The setting of the other ring was a funny, flat little dish, silver also, with a black patina on the inside and a very small round turquoise cabochon lifted up in the center. Strange and a bit severe in its design, at least for a child.
I loved these rings very much. My mother told me they were to teach me how to wear jewelry, how to learn to "take care of better things." I don't know if I did a good job wearing or caring for them. I know I did wear them, almost always, and by the things I suffered learned that, for certain tasks, taking off rings is best. They were stolen twice, once in elementary school and once in high school. Both times, mysteriously, by a girl I thought had everything she wanted and could never be interested in such small and silly things as my rings, "better" though my mother thought them. Both times I had to fight and threaten to get them back, accusing, pleading, veering dangerously between tears and rage. Both times I ransomed them using social capitol I could not afford to liquidate and emerged with a additional and permanent dark mark, only social of course, the girls saying i don't have them don't make such a big deal is she going to tell don't yell are you going to cry ok baby here are your stupid rings. Both times I thought I had lost them forever. Both times I had taken the rings off in an art class, setting them down near my work space, to perform a task dangerous to rings. Art has threatened lots of things I hold dear. I don't remember how I lost them at last, only how desolate I felt, how I kept trying to rewrite that bad ending in my mind.

The most lovely and magical of my jewels was a necklace. This one also liked to ride in my mouth, when it could. It was a gold heart, on a gold chain. The heart was a fat, puffed cage. If you put it up to your eye you could look through the itty bitty bars running straight up and down and see the room or the yard or your sister on the other side but changed a little, a bit distorted and less solid. Less boring. Tumbling about in this cage was a glory of rubies, very dark red, very small indeed. They fascinated me. I would sit on the floor of my room and turn the heart over and over, watching them spill around and over each other, stones caressing each sister ruby with the smallest chiming, tinkling sound.

There are things we cannot stand and things we cannot bear. My golden, ruby-filled heart was like an enchanted pomegranate from a wonder tale, lightly transformed to this shape for more ease of care and keeping till the moment arrived when it would draw light into the gold and fire into the stones, enacting its full power and function; wearing it was a thing I could not bear. I often put it on and knew that as I wore it I was both altered and revealed, more beautiful, more desirable, not five years old but a woman to remember always though only glimpsed in a dark wood, briefly down a long hall or as a flash in a misty mirror (there was a lot of dimness associated with this necklace and its tales), blood red gems flashing through the golden cage at my throat. I knew it made me a siren to kill for, to die for, to long for, to obey in all my wishes no matter how painful that obedience might be, both for my swain and, yes, for myself, reluctant administrant of quests. I toyed with the idea of wearing it to school. There were a couple of kindergarten boys I thought could be improved by its effects. But I had to, regretfully, cast aside the idea as impractical. It could never be, for the self reasons that I could never wear it at home or in my garden for more than a moment or two. When it was on me I couldn't see it, and that really bothered me. So I carried it in my hand or my mouth or a vial of power.

I think I lost it under a tree.

I have a lot of jewelry now, really a lot. People say, you have a lot of jewelry. And it's true. I even have a few jewels, but not very many because I don't like paying much for something that I know I might very well lose or break. Because I do. Lose it and break it. Sometimes I lose a piece, and it upsets me, the way a basket of fruit is upset if you tip it upside down. This is what I have learned by the things I have suffered.

Only put jewelry in your mouth for a minute or two for safe keeping and only then in cases of great need and duress. It hurts going down. And you never want it back.
Take your rings off to do any serious work. Better for you and for the rings.
Don't panic. Panic makes you swell. If you got it on, you can get it off.
Unless you've been injured in which case get help immediately. Things will not get better if you wait.
Playing baseball with the boys is better ball but murder on jewelry.
If it is green I will wear it almost continually for about a year and then either lose it or break it.

And this.

If you ever own a truly magical jewel, wear it and chance the consequences. True, you may, all unwilling, ensnare and enslave a few hapless and helpless knights. But. Better you should regretfully put them to good use battling the world's sorrow though their souls long for what they may never achieve than that your own heart's fire be tumbled away and lost in long grass in a crafty tree's deep shade one careless moment at a doll's tea party, thoughtlessly poured out of a small, chipped, china cup, catching fire, sparkling wine red and gold, twisting in the sun, gone forever. Trees, like the ocean, are greedy and capricious and don't understand taking turns with little girls. They don't give things back when you are finished playing. They wait till they have finished playing to give up a treasure, and ownership means some other thing, altogether, to the ocean and to the trees. I have found many a treasure in the crotch of a tree or in the grass at its feet, just as I have joyfully scooped up numerous delights cast at my own feet by the sea waves but never one that was mine before.

Don't let him know she liked them best,
For this must ever be
a secret, kept from all the rest,
Between yourself and me.