MAGPIE returns Broken necklace, broken promise (click here to Magpie blog)

This week I will try my spin to the Magpie prompt; fall has arrived  heavily here in MN and this photo made me think of a couple things because it reminds me of.......well read along to learn what fell into my head and  then to the keyboard.  Magpie offers a weekly prompt that bloggers use in their poem, story, vignette.....

We were done clearing out her home before turning it over to the estate sale professionals, I had chosen carefully among  the overflow of treasures limiting my compulsion to continue accumulating, because there is only so much I can continue to squeeze into our own home. I took one last quick  browse, despite Jerry's impatient plea,  "Come on now, how much stuff can you take!  Enough already, leave something for the sale."

I opened the carved oriental  box again but now  the bangle and beads popped out, contrasted against the black taffeta fabric.  I'd  passed over the silver pearls and burnished brass talisman before, forsaking it for my grandmother's wrist watch instead.  All trinkets  that Aunt Czoche had held onto over the many years.  But now at the last minute there it was, the bronze talisman with the demon dancing among the loose pearls.

Suddenly the childhood rhyme echoed back from years long  gone  through my mind,  pushing forward, to the front, like the  pearls in front of me now, the words  I'd made up while  helping Grandma scoop up the pearls that scattered across the carpet, when the string to her necklace  broke so very long ago.  Spontaneous poems were  frequent with us often with some help from Grandma and I saw us again picking up each loose  pearl  and placing them into Grandma's hanky, for safe keeping, someday to be restrung, that someday never came. She  couldn't afford to do that and I remember so distinctly telling her, "someday I'll get them restrung for you, Grandma..."  Long time ago, had not thought of if and yet now, the rhyme taunted me till I spoke it out loud:

"Pearls of silver,
Pearls of grey,
Dance with the demon
But only today.

Gems for the lady
Brass for the man
Dance of the demon
Watch while you can.

Pearls so silver
Pearls so grey
Dance of the demon
Chase him away..

Pearls all scattered
Pick them up now
Demons might dance
But we'll show you how!

One, two, three.......

Resurrection of the rhyme, one of the many we made up while we slapped jump ropes against the sidewalks, childhood refrains. We girls  challenged each other on who'd make  up the jump rope jingles  the fastest.  The broken strand of pearls were fresh in my mind that day so I shouted out the demon dance jump. Hadn't I been ahead of the curve even then, if only I'd put it to music, my jingle similar to "Devil went down to Georgia" by the  Charlie Daniels band the ring tone on my Blackberry today.

What else lurks behind the memory wall of my  mind to be retrieved by the sight of a long ago  familiar object?  Why think of it now, except that there were the pearls, still waiting to be restrung more than 60 years later.  I picked up the pearls and folded them into a handkerchief, stuffed them into my jacket pocket,  to be restrung someday very soon, along with the brass demon medallion.  I'd promised my grandmother I'd do that.  These could not be sold, they brought back memories and the reminder of the promise. Doesn't it all?


This is but one of the Magpie posts.  To see how others use the prompt click here and browse the Magpie site, which  has grown so much since my last  visit..... http://magpietales.blogspot.com/2010/11/mag-40.html#comment-form