The Charm Bracelet(18)

“You still remember how to do that, Mom?” Arden asked. “That’s amazing.”

“I remember a lot of things from the past,” she said. “Because I choose to.”

Lolly sipped her coffee and tossed a quilt over her and Lauren’s legs. “Speaking of which … you mentioned sharing some memories yesterday. You said the doctor thinks it would be helpful for me to start ‘mentally exercising.’ Well, ironically, I gave that a lot of thought last night. And I think we should do that. All of us. The things I never told you, all the questions you never asked, all those little details that slid by, I guess it’s time for me to share them. And the best way to do that is by telling you about these charms around my wrist.”

Lolly lifted her tiny wrist and shook her arm, which was as tanned and spotted as a bird’s egg. Her fingers and wrists were knotted and gnarled, but still had a delicateness to them. The bracelet sagged with charms, singing with every little movement Lolly made.

“These charms capture every moment of my life … and yours, too. None of us would be sitting here today without them. They tell the story of where we’ve been, how far we’ve come, and where we still hope to go. I still believe that my life is like that dragonfly charm I gave you when you were a girl: Despite any sadness, it has been filled with good fortune.”

Lolly held her charm bracelet up to her face and squinted.

“So, let’s see … where’s the best place to start?”

As her old hands rifled through each charm, her eyes grew misty, as if touching each one were unlocking some long-ago memory.

“I think the best place to start is with this one,” Lolly finally said. “My sewing machine charm. And it’s only fitting as we’re covered with this quilt. Lauren? Are you ready?”

Lauren nodded.

“Arden, are you ready? I know how much you always hated that old sewing machine,” she said. “But I think this will give you a different perspective.”

Arden thought of the sewing machine and all the embarrassing homemade clothing she had to wear as a teen, recalling all the kids who teased her so much that all she wanted to do was run away from Lost Land Lake. Forever.

As if on cue, a breeze swept through the screened porch and rattled a wind chime, continuing its path to jangle the charms on the charm bracelet.

“I think they’re ready, too,” Lolly laughed. “This sewing machine charm was the first one I ever received. It was from my grandmother, Mary, and it’s the reason we’re all sitting here today.”





part three




The Sewing Machine Charm

To a Life Bound by Family





Eight





1901



The ticket was nestled in the straw, right under an egg.

Mary O’Connell looked up, her blond hair sticking through the top of the wire in the chicken coop, and blinked big tears out of her cornflower blue eyes.

“I don’t want it! What if I never see you again?” Mary asked.

Her father, John, stood outside the hen house as snowflakes tumbled slowly through the air like forgotten confetti. He held out his gloved hand for the egg. When Mary handed him the ticket instead, he refused it.

“It’s a miracle, Mary!” he said in his Irish brogue, grabbing the egg from her and placing it in a wire basket. “It’s a ticket to America!”

America, she thought.

At seventeen, all Mary knew was this tiny plot of land, these chickens, and her parents’ garden. She could hardly imagine a place so far away. And yet she knew there was no work in Ireland. Her job prospects were bleaker than the weather.

“We can barely survive as it is, Mary. We will follow you when we get more money.”

John O’Connell called himself an “egg dealer,” but even he knew that was generous: His few chickens gave him just enough eggs to sell from a ramshackle cart every weekend at the town market, and his garden gave him just enough vegetables to keep his family upright. The rest of the year, he worked as a laborer, but no one really had enough money to hire outside help.

Marian O’Connell had worked as a seamstress before the local factory closed, and now she made specialty dresses for wealthier families—communion and wedding dresses, a few times a year—but she mostly sold her quilts at market alongside her husband’s eggs. Mary worked alongside her mother at the sewing machine, studying her, watching her, learning her mother’s craft by the flicker of firelight in their tiny thatched cottage.

“Eggs and quilts, Mary, eggs and quilts,” Marian would chant as she sewed. “Just enough of both to keep us from dying. That’s no way to live.”

Marian’s sister-in-law and brother, a skilled wood carver, had traveled to America two years earlier, and he’d found work as a furniture craftsman in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“Many immigrants are here,” her brother would write, “logging or crafting furniture. You must come. There is work in America!”

And then one late winter’s day—out of the blue—he and his wife had sent a prepaid ticket to the O’Connells with a note: “Only enough money for one. You must decide who sails.”

It had never been much of a decision. “Mary,” her parents cried when the ticket arrived. “Mary.”