Personal History; Personal Mystery
Mothers are the gift that keeps on giving. If you think that I have just given my mother a compliment—well—you never met the lady. That woman could simultaneously give you a compliment and suck the air out of it all with a beneficent smile. When I received my Grandmother Hanson’s delicate, silver filigree brooch Mom blithely said, “Grandma said she wanted you to have this. It is broken, but I don’t really see you in jewelry anyway.” Gulp!
The brooch is, indeed, incomplete. It is made of silver, a heart surmounted by a crown with a cross on top. There are four small hooks at the top, bottom and both sides of the heart and, while two of the hooks have long pendants hanging from them, the other two do not. The pendants themselves are interesting. They are similar and all ending with stylized crosses. All of the intricate designs are accomplished in thin silver twists, with teardrop shaped “spoons” hanging from loops of metal. My maternal grandmother (a Norwegian immigrant) had received it from her mother. That is all I knew from oral family history, but I have recently learned a great deal more.
I am my family’s historian. It is not the job I wanted, but it is the job I got. When your frail and failing mother hands you the envelope full of her life’s work on the family and says it is yours, you don’t tell her to look elsewhere for the lucky winner. But I was reluctant to tackle the job, so the brooch and the work languished.
For decades I treated the brooch as an historic family artifact, not as a piece of jewelry. I tucked it away in my jewelry box, taking it out only once to have it cleaned by a trusted friend. Last week I started reading a mystery by a Norwegian author. As the story unfolded the victim’s traditional Norwegian “sølje” (brooch) became an important clue. The more I read about the silver filigree brooch the more I realized they were describing my grandmother’s pin. My murder mystery had suddenly given me a personal mystery.
I got out the brooch, went to the internet and started looking. The clasp (a scrolled curve) revealed that it dated from before 1910. The crosses were Maltese (Amalfi) and usually indicated hospitality. The “spoons” were concave to reflect away trolls or evil spirits. More important, I discovered that a sølje is always given as a wedding gift and that as it is passed down to each generation a pendant is added. There are three pendants on Grandma’s brooch. Assuming they are added symmetrically, there must have been at least two others. Could I actually be looking at six generations of Hanson family history? Could this brooch date back to the 1700’s?
Family history is like our nation’s history. Some of it will be magnificent, some desperate, some heroic and some rueful. We are not responsible for what our ancestors did wrong, nor do we get credit for what they did right. We are all free standing individuals, making and bearing the burden of our own decisions. But history is a good touchstone. It allows us to see us on a larger canvas.
March is Women’s History Month. To me, the beauty of this brooch and its story lies in the optimism of the long line of women who cherished, cared for and handed it down to the next girl in the line. It says that our past is worth remembering. Who wants to be the weak link in that chain? Our heritage gives us something to use for ballast when the winds of change blow hard. This sølje will be passed to my granddaughters. I hope they will look at it, read its story and say “I will add something good to this narrative.”
That is what I call keeping the faith.
The brooch is, indeed, incomplete. It is made of silver, a heart surmounted by a crown with a cross on top. There are four small hooks at the top, bottom and both sides of the heart and, while two of the hooks have long pendants hanging from them, the other two do not. The pendants themselves are interesting. They are similar and all ending with stylized crosses. All of the intricate designs are accomplished in thin silver twists, with teardrop shaped “spoons” hanging from loops of metal. My maternal grandmother (a Norwegian immigrant) had received it from her mother. That is all I knew from oral family history, but I have recently learned a great deal more.
I am my family’s historian. It is not the job I wanted, but it is the job I got. When your frail and failing mother hands you the envelope full of her life’s work on the family and says it is yours, you don’t tell her to look elsewhere for the lucky winner. But I was reluctant to tackle the job, so the brooch and the work languished.
For decades I treated the brooch as an historic family artifact, not as a piece of jewelry. I tucked it away in my jewelry box, taking it out only once to have it cleaned by a trusted friend. Last week I started reading a mystery by a Norwegian author. As the story unfolded the victim’s traditional Norwegian “sølje” (brooch) became an important clue. The more I read about the silver filigree brooch the more I realized they were describing my grandmother’s pin. My murder mystery had suddenly given me a personal mystery.
I got out the brooch, went to the internet and started looking. The clasp (a scrolled curve) revealed that it dated from before 1910. The crosses were Maltese (Amalfi) and usually indicated hospitality. The “spoons” were concave to reflect away trolls or evil spirits. More important, I discovered that a sølje is always given as a wedding gift and that as it is passed down to each generation a pendant is added. There are three pendants on Grandma’s brooch. Assuming they are added symmetrically, there must have been at least two others. Could I actually be looking at six generations of Hanson family history? Could this brooch date back to the 1700’s?
Family history is like our nation’s history. Some of it will be magnificent, some desperate, some heroic and some rueful. We are not responsible for what our ancestors did wrong, nor do we get credit for what they did right. We are all free standing individuals, making and bearing the burden of our own decisions. But history is a good touchstone. It allows us to see us on a larger canvas.
March is Women’s History Month. To me, the beauty of this brooch and its story lies in the optimism of the long line of women who cherished, cared for and handed it down to the next girl in the line. It says that our past is worth remembering. Who wants to be the weak link in that chain? Our heritage gives us something to use for ballast when the winds of change blow hard. This sølje will be passed to my granddaughters. I hope they will look at it, read its story and say “I will add something good to this narrative.”
That is what I call keeping the faith.
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