The style that summer was necklace PDAs. The more flamboyant people had flashy necklaces with spikes everywhere, but the one my mother wore was simple – a four-petaled flower on a strand of pearls.
When I think of that summer, I remember my mother, always wearing that necklace, trailing music behind her. She let the baby play with it, fiddling with silver stamens once she’d switched it off – it only took one instance of the baby accidentally rearranging her Google calendar for her to learn that. It suited her, that necklace. One might not even realize what it was. One might think it was just a necklace.
Which is how she got the senator on tape. Or, well, on necklace-recording. The senator was notoriously behind on the technological times… if he even realized that necklace-PDAs existed, he likely figured they were all big flashy things. And here comes my sweet mother, hair in a bun, librarian-chic with her pearls and little silver flower…
That necklace changed the world. But when I think of it and her, I think of that trail of music, or of the baby’s chubby fingers tugging at it. And her soft smile.
