Grabbed by the Throat

I helped a woman choose necklaces yesterday, one for her mother, one for her. 

It occurred to me, as we examined pendants and ropes and gaudy strands of brightly colored faux jewels, how powerful something as simple as a necklace could be. How a seemingly innocuous ornament hanging limply on a display hook, when fastened around a human neck, can speak so loudly -- about age, about values, about how we want to seem, no matter how little it might resemble how we are. 

Earlier that morning, as I sat at the kitchen counter with my daughter and we engaged in our usual spotty and distracted conversation about everything and nothing, she met Hester Prynne. She had known the basics of Hawthorne's story long before opening the book -- that a woman in Puritanical, colonial Massachusetts had committed adultery and been condemned to wear a scarlet "A" around her neck -- and, having anticipated a juicy tale that might even stand up to "Fifty Shades of Gray," she was initially disappointed by the bland descriptions and indecipherable Middle English language of the first few pages. She complained that it was taking a bit too long for the heroine to appear.

I fiddled aimlessly with the pendant hanging at my throat, the gold and silver Star of David I had spotted once in Mexico, a misfit standing out in a sea of crosses. My daughters had watched me watch it, my husband had bought it when I wasn't looking. He gave it to my youngest so she could give it to me once we had gotten home. This was during the first of our separations, at a time when we somehow knew we needed to be apart, for reasons as yet unarticulated, for judgments as yet not made. It was a gift given and accepted out of mixed emotions and confused assumptions, a gift that spoke mixed messages each time I put it on.

By the time my daughter reached the bottom of her cereal bowl, just as she scooped out the last grains stubbornly floating in the shallow pool of milk, her spirits lifted. Hester, condemned, quiet, and dignified, had arrived, decked out in her scarlet "A." So, too, had the other women of the colony appeared, condemning and vocal, their dignity as elusive as their vengefulness was all consuming. Portrayed as physically ugly, the townswomen mused among themselves about more severe punishments for the young and beautiful woman on the scaffold, about better alternatives than the embroidered "A" necklace. Jewelry shopping fraught with hasty judgments, mixed emotions, confused assumptions.

Fast forward from the seventeenth century to modern day anywhere, pick a community, pick a religion, pick a class. There is always someone sinning, always someone breaking a law, and, often if not always, there is somebody getting caught. As my daughter shared with me a passage about the townswomen, as we waded through the thick language together, we acknowledged (somewhat telepathically) the Hesters and the evil townswomen of our world. The sinners, the condemned, the condemners, the folks who go through life pointing fingers as they struggle every day, whether consciously or not, to avoid getting caught for their own most base human instincts. The lines are fuzzy, with lots of overlap. We are all guilty, creating images for ourselves with the jewelry we choose and the masks we wear, painting pictures in our minds of others when we have little more to go on than, say, a necklace.

With my help, the woman finally chose two necklaces yesterday. Something ornate to dress up her mother's outfit, something simple to dress her own outfit down. Mixed messages projected by both women, the truth -- if there is one -- buried somewhere within the confusion.