Letting Go of my Crown Jewels

When I moved from our home to a condo on May 15, in the midst of the pandemic, I sorted through endless piles of stuff we had accumulated over 45 years of living in a large house with tons of (maybe too much?) storage. I was too overwhelmed to deal with my jewelry, which I had not really been wearing since March. Sweats and t-shirts don’t call for accessorizing. And I quickly discovered that masks barely fit over hearing aids, so earrings were out of the question.

Yesterday, my watch broke. No problem. I had an almost identical one… somewhere. The watch I was seeking is a very comfortable Skagen that I purchased several years ago when the one I had worn for ten years stopped working. Replacing the battery didn’t work, so I followed the advice of a friend who had the same watch and put it away in a drawer. She claimed hers fixed itself after a year, but in the meantime, I bought a second one. Amazingly, a year later the original one started to work again, so I put the replacement in a drawer. And then we moved.

The search for watch #2 led to the discovery that my jewelry had become a jumbled mess in transit. Also, it was unlikely that I would ever wear most of it. Even after COVID-19 departs our shores and I can wear some of my normal clothes again and masks are no longer required, no one needs this much costume jewelry. My problem is that I am sentimental. So, if the…