Jewels That Speak
A Memoir
Lynn Burlingham
A GLITTERING TALE OF MIXED-UP IDENTITY
An innocent girl is born into famous warring cultures: The Freuds in Vienna have taken control of her grandmother, Louis Comfort Tiffany's youngest daughter. Defying the wishes of her artist father, her doctor husband, and her lawyer in-laws, Grandmother took her four children and broke away from the Tiffanys, leaving the wealth and glittery trappings of the Madison Avenue Mansion for the new world of psychoanalysis and the simple ways of living of the Freuds.The young girl is confused by the paradox of what she sees and hears in her family, growing up away from Grandmother in the States, and then right up close in London: the teaching of psychoanalysis versus the practice and the lack of positive results. Secretly, she disbelieves in this "new science." It isn't making her beloved father any better. What should she embrace?
Her father breaks, and her heart breaks along with him. How is she going to find her way through life now?
She turns from people to the spirituality that gemstones have to offer, starting with an antique amethyst that her father gives her for her sixteenth birthday.
The jewels become symbols of the emotional distress pulling the girl's life in different directions: America, or England? Practical, or artistic? Family, romance, marriage, or self? Are the clever people good? The trustworthy people clever?
Seeking answers to her mixed-up identity, she becomes a teacher, fulfilling only one side of herself. She gets married three times. A serious car accident crushes three of her vertebrae, an excruciating injury from which she must fight her way back. In desperation, she bites the psychology bullet (but, oh no, no, not Freud!) and undergoes therapy.
Just what does she have to do, what does she have to become, to feel love, to become whole in this crazy world?
Excerpt
Eight years old. 1953, Riverdale, New York.
I am bored. So bored, I could scream. I can't think of anything to do. I don't want to put on my roller skates and roll around the neighborhood. How dumb. If I get on my bike and go investigating, I'll just run into traffic. My sisters and brothers do not interest me today.
My brain is dull. I lie on my bed with my feet up in the air, waving them back and forth to a beat of four. I take one foot and make a semicircle in the air. Then I do it with the other. Who cares if my underpants show. After a while, I jump off the bed, skirt around the corner of the room, and open the attic door.
Up I go, one step at a time, until I reach the top. It's so musty and dark. I stand there a few minutes until my eyes can see all the old junk. What a mess. Why doesn't someone do something about it? I walk over to a little window and stare down at the street. Sure looks different from way up here. Awfully small.
What should I do now? Maybe I can find some things to play dress-up. Some glamorous old dress of Mom's or something. There are some boxes on the floor at my feet. I get on my knees and open one. Graying, floppy old ice skates and smelly old books. I open another one. Can't quite see what's in there. I reach down and touch cold, smooth surfaces. I draw one out. It's a piece of glass.
I stand up and hold it up to the light of the window. It's the color of a summer-ripe peach. I quickly descend the attic stairs to turn on the electric light at the bottom. The glass is gorgeous, the color so vibrant I want to eat it. Back up the stairs, I draw other pieces of glass out of the box: one is daisy white, another Norwegian blue, another moss green, still another honeybee yellow. I take hold of the yellow one, spit on the corner of my dress, and wipe the glass clean. I hold it up to the natural light. The honeybee streams through the window. I am so excited at my treasure find, I give a little jump. Perhaps I'll tell Dad my secret.
(I didn't know it at the time, but these "surfaces" were pieces of leaded Favrile glass, a distinctive type of iridescent glass that was developed and created by my great-grandfather Louis Comfort Tiffany. Because the colors were mixed in while the glass was still hot, they took on a special depth and richness.)
Excerpt
Tom took a delicate antique yellow gold chain with interspersed diamonds and matching earrings out of the soft taupe felt sack.
"Come and sit with me." He laid them gingerly across his knees.
I stared at him. At them. "What are you doing?"
"I've been keeping these in the safe deposit box," he said. "I've taken them out because I want you to have them."
"Tom, really? They're so beautiful. I can't believe it! You never told me about them."
"Yes, I know. I didn't want to mention them till I was ready. They come from my family way back, our Vanderbilt connection."
His lips curled up at the corners, almost self-mocking. I searched his face for clues.
"Yes, I am asking you to marry me."
You're kidding!" I looked into the flashing blue sparks from his eyes. As I did, both his smile and his eyes turned genuine.
"God, you mean it." I had hoped and waited for several years to hear those words. And now, soon we can have a child, I thought.
"Do you want to put them on, or shall I?"
So formal. I ducked my head down and he lifted the chain over my head, wrapped it once, then twice. He patted it in place on my chest, then handed me the earrings. I swizzled them in the palm of my hand, sunlight dancing like magical sprites on top of the water.
I jumped up and ran to the bathroom to put on the earrings, and to see the necklace in the mirror. Enchanting. Like a princess, I felt accepted into a royal family, a Tiffany, a Vanderbilt.
Excerpt
"Stop!" orders my mother from the throne of her wheelchair.
I stand behind Mom watching the back of her straight, silvery hair, her thin shoulders. She leans forward to grasp a branch laden with purple lilac blossoms and draws it in to her nose. She takes a good long whiff, then lets the branch snap back.
"Heavenly," she says.
An eighty-six-year-old woman now, she lives in assisted care in a retirement community in Pennsylvania. She still has her own apartment within the complex for a period of time, which is where I stay. We take a walk. I push her chair along, monitoring her oxygen apparatus—a necessity, as her emphysema has turned acute. The gauge turns red.
"Why are you hurrying?" Mom sounds annoyed.
"I have to go to the bathroom," I lie.
"Why didn't you go at my apartment?"
"I don't know." I lie again.
"Don't go so fast!"
"I have to."
We race to the side entrance nearest the nurse's station.
"She's out of oxygen!" I gasp.
Deftly the nurse fetches a new tank and plugs my mother's plastic tube into it. I breathe again. My mother never stopped breathing.
We don't talk much as we move along the pathway. We enjoy the beauty of spring, especially in this place, which has unique trees and lovely gardens.
Only now, in her old age, do we truly find our way back to each other. We walk in harmony. Deep satisfaction centers my being. We sit in her room and nap, eat meals, drink five o'clock cocktails, and gossip. With no family interruptions, we simply move in and out of what's us.
I discover that my mother wears false teeth. She lets me know. She lets me wash them for her. I sneak looks at her from my chair. This woman, this person, my mother.
Lying in her apartment bed at night, I pull her covers up to my chin. With her spirit all around me, I close my eyes. Drifting into a dream state, I thank God for my mother, and I thank my mother for me.