pearls « ann rosenquist fee

People say marriage is hard work. One thing that’s especially hard is when your spouse, who is not AT ALL a member of your blog’s target demographic, has the audacity to read your posts and offer feedback. Insightful feedback. Feedback that says I-understand-you-and-I-get-where-you’re-coming-from, which, you know, to the untrained ear sounds like “compassion” and being “known” and “loved” by somebody for a “really long time,” but to the married ear it just sounds like showing off.

So, fine. Fine. So the first time I wore the pearls was for this.

Ultimate 1987.

Probably imagining they would come off more like this.

Courtesy W magazine, latest issue. Yeah yeah.

Also, the pearls were not a coming-of-age family gift or inheritance, like I may have let seem the case in previous posts. They were a gift from a boy who drove a red Nova I believe and introduced me to the fine music of Steely Dan. I know that part for sure. I’ve had no problem making that music part of my regular life over the years, no problem at all, and I have nothing but nice memory-feelings toward the boy. So you can see how it’s maddening that the failure of these pearls, every time I’ve tried to wear them, their complete failure to turn the room into a dark sparkling ballroom, or turn my sweater set into a feather cloak, or turn whatever moment I’m inside into a lush-lush Steely Dan-feeling moment complete with a horn section, you can see why I shouldn’t have to be the one to figure out the thing that is APPARENTLY in my mind regarding what is I want from the pearls.

Right? You guys.

Oh so HERE WE GO.

You know what. I’m just not having this conversation right now. I am just. Not.

Tomorrow: Let’s get back to the easy stuff like outpatient surgery and the healing powers of well-chosen accessories.

At this point things look almost exactly how I figured they should and I will be damned if my own pearls are going to stand in the way of total completion.

How I thought things should look was: tall hair, high shoes, big purse, pearls. A strand of pearls every day like no big deal. Like, oh what, am I wearing actual pearls? I didn’t notice. They must just seem like part of me. I barely noticed I was so effortlessly pearled.

I feel like the other trappings of mature adulthood are on track just the way my preteen imagination foretold.

Tall hair. Tall like a twist cone pointing up to high heaven.

Here is my all-season lineup of Gene Simmons hooves.

Ideally the insides would smell of mint gum and perfume and cigarettes like my mom’s did but you can’t always have it all.

Here is the purse! Even more mature: A briefcase. Ideally the inside would smell of mint gum, perfume, and cigarettes like my mom’s purse but you can’t always have it all.

But.

On and off I’ve searched “how to wear pearls,” “how to wear pearls casually,” “how to wear pearls without looking like a 1950s homemaker.” Et cetera. The results are no help. The results show new pieces of jewelry a person could buy, like, contemporary settings of the objects called pearls. Pearls in rings that span all your knuckles. Pearls intermingled on a strand with sea glass, chunks of wood, plastic babies. That is not what I’m asking to see. What I’m asking is how to wear the actual pearls I already possess, on my own personal neck as-is.

Pair this bleak quest with the fact that I already dislike this time of year. The damp chill and the dirty snow. My dirty coat and my dirty car and my front-yard fountain knocked over from a wind storm, a while back when it felt like warmth was coming but then no it wasn’t.

Really sorry, neighbors.

And then it ice-rained and now the base is frozen into the mud and the plant corpses I never raked away last fall and it looks so stupid and I feel bad for my neighbors having to look at this but there is nothing I can do about it until April is done.

Couple days later and still frozen. Really sorry.

I can’t make spring go away any faster and I can’t move my birdbath so I’m just going to deal with the pearls. Thirty days. Thirty days in a row, I’m wearing these pearls no matter what.

The look for day one is called Hey Pearls I Got Your 1950s Homemaker Right Here.