Loot this year included all manner of treats, from a painting of me on safari by my elder child, family portraits of squirrels ordered from faraway SF, a new speaker to play the iphone, a shiny teapot, a huge bag of cinnamon jellybeans, a carved wooden owl that hoots, and an inflatable moosehead trophy (cause I wasn’t allowed to bring my taxidermy to this country).
The best however was a glass eye pendant, to replace the creepy necklace I’ve grown weary of, though unfortunately the chain did not fit the new trinket.
Lli was the only friend who consistently turned up to celebrate the doleful birthday, traversing snowstorm and bad public transit so our infants could crawl around poking dangerous things in my series of eccentric, semi-derelict houses back in Portland.
One year she gave me the most genius gift of my entire adult life – a human glass eye still in a presentation case – and it resides in a place of honor with my collection of antique medical gadgets and false teeth. The same shelf also holds the bits of jewelry collected during my travels, and today I went rummaging in the scientific cabinet to find a chain for the new eye.
The only one that fit was originally used to suspend a loteria card featuring a pierced heart, one of the visual elements that later became the tattoo, forcing retirement of the necklace it referred to. Later I used the chain to hold milagros from a pilgrimage to Chimayo, then medallions from Paris, Rome, and Tallinn.
Before I learned to flirt (or rather, realized that I already knew how, in my own vicious and marauding manner) these talismans were mainly just a private comfort, a way to mark and organize and remember chaotic events.
They were also the only thing anyone ever dared comment on, and the only breach in my defense systems, with Inga or Moe or Sasha or a dozen others feeling free to rummage around to get a better look at my cleavage as I rolled my eyes in exasperation.
Straight boys correctly sense they would swiftly have their fingers broken if they tried the same, but eventually I noticed that the necklaces implied permission for menfolk to look.
How tiresome, and how unfortunate that I noticed – it was so much more pleasant to drift around, oblivious and impervious.