Value of Adornment

C is a new hire at the hair salon I visit. She was billed as the up and coming star that cost half of their usual rates. I was willing to try as little can go wrong with my very simple hairstyle. C was remarkably silent through the process and focussed on the job. She seemed very young and I wondered if she was nervous about making mistakes. 

In an effort to ease her up, I tried to make some small talk but wading through a swamp in stilettos would have been easier. From what I could see, C was competent and there was no risk of any terminal errors. I had to assume she was either quiet person or did not want to engage me in a conversation for whatever reason. In my efforts to warm her up, I complimented a gold-colored bracelet she was wearing and asked where she got it from- that it would look nice on my daughter. She said, "It's from Cartier". 

I repeated that it was very pretty and immediately wondered if that was not the biggest faux-pas ever. The style of the said bracelet is very familiar and recognizable; any woman who has not lived under a rock would have likely seen it - on fashion magazines, billboards and so on. It's like knowing what the Tiffany blue looks like. There is a presumption that a person who bothers to come to a hair salon would know at least that. Clearly, I had failed the most fundamental fashion awareness test. 

It got me wondering about the value of adornment on a woman. Who adds value to whom more specifically - does the woman adorn the gold she wears or is it the other way around; if the answer to that question is - it depends. If this had been someone I met in the course of a business meeting and especially a high-powered client, I would assume by default that the bracelet was a Cartier as it appeared to be. On this young lady, I assumed that Target had produced a remarkably classy imitation of designer jewelry. I was considering it for J thinking it would be a total steal for under twenty bucks. The idea that it cost several thousand dollars was unimaginable. 

I wondered if anyone else in my seat getting their hair cut would see this piece of jewelry for what it was, what would they assume if they did. Would they wonder about the incongruity between the young lady's income and what she was wearing on her wrist? Would they wonder if the kid came from a rich family and did not feel compelled more than doing hair? 

Walcott For All Seasons

Midsummer, Tobago by Derek Walcott has a very special place in my heart. I have read it so many times yet the effect it has on me never faded. In each phase of my life, the poem has meant different things to me. There is always the huge wave of nostalgia for the summers of my childhood, followed by the country I think I have loved and lost. India is not what it once used to be except in the retelling of my childhood to J. There have been emerald green rivers and scorched Sal trees in my childhood, the beach where hot stones were skipped over to get to the water. On summer afternoons, we napped long hours. Days held and lost over and over. But today I feel closest to "days that outgrow, like daughters, my harboring arms." Only Walcott can give words to my incredible dread of the empty nest that is less than a year out.

Broad sun-stoned beaches.
White heat.
A green river.
A bridge,
scorched yellow palms
from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.
Days I have held,
days I have lost,
days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harboring arms.

Group Hug

My friend D reached to a group of us with a message that is so apropos to the times that we live in. Everyone is connected via social media, it seems much easier to text than to call people - you don't want to presume they are available to talk to you on demand. Over the years connections fray and people like D who were once very close seem far away and unreachable. It is mostly in our imagination I think. Each time I have actually called her, it felt like we have been in touch the whole time and not as if years had passed since our last contact - which is the reality. 

She proposed to invite us to movies that we may like to watch at a local movie theater. 
The invites would go out to a large group but no one was obligated to attend. Yet, some of us would show to some of them and we would meet each other on the way in or out, pause for a conversation. It would make for random and happy connections between people who have not taken the time to maintain real social contact with each other. I am looking forward to the invites and reconnecting with people I have not seen in years. I am sure, D made all recipients of her message very happy.