This is a very little story. It happened in 1994. Or it started there. My parents had organized the second of our two family reunions, this one in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, where they had a time share. I have just looked at the pictures we took there, and I think I will write about that trip – because it was wonderful, and it was the last time we were all together in one place. But the point of this tale is what my mother did there one day.
I had gone into town with my parents. I don’t remember who else might have been with us. G, probably. As I am a sucker for the off-the-beaten-path kind of stores, when I saw the Rainbow Gift Shop, I had to stop there. The place is cobbled out of several buildings, a couple of them ancient desert cabins and sheds, and all the outdoor walls are covered with flat metal sculpture, desert themed. Homemade. By a real person.
Just shots of us messing around the day we took the bracelet picture.
Had I been eight, my dad would probably not have stopped there. But I was of significant age by that time, having four children of my own, and it was more trouble than it was worth for my dad to have protested when I suggested – very sweetly – that we stop. So we pulled off that wee mountain highway into the narrow parking lot. This was back in the days when time share/resort people had only just found this gorgeous mountain setting. Back before all the new stores and restaurants and strip malls. Just the old town along the highway. And the ranches that peppered the sides of the forested mountains.
Rainbow Gifts belongs to a cheerful and very kind woman, Brenda, whose husband works in metal (and probably does other things), while she runs the shop. She is one smart cookie, and that shop is a work of love. In the front she offers fun gift items, but it’s in the middle and back that you find the treasure: real things. Handmade things in metal and stone and glass. And in the very back, in a sort of Kiva shaped room (round, in other words), are the very fine things: jewelry made by local artists, people from Colorado and New Mexico and Arizona. Native American jewelry and pottery. Beautiful, amazing things.
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Uncle M with Andy-pandy
I love owning things that a real person has made—an artist, a craftsman. A single thing that is itself. And I love the Navajo way with silver. The Zuni way with stone. There is something spiritual about all of it (and I am serious about that); a small creat-ure echoing the act of the Great Creation, taking a gift and amplifying it. I think a single moment of actual seeing, of wonder, of recognition is at the base of our own ability to shape things. Gratitude.
Anyway, G and I didn’t really have money to spend on extra things. I was looking in those cases, choosing a ring here or there to try on, hoping I could afford something. And then I saw this bracelet – a single elegant curve of silver inlaid with oval stones, each a different stone and color. When I slipped that bracelet over my wrist, I felt instantly – and very unexpectedly – lovely. Maybe twice in my life that’s happened to me. Once it was a fabulous dress that I was shocked to find made me look sylph-like. And this bracelet. The price of it wasn’t rich, rich. But still maybe five times anything I could have afforded to spend..
The ever-civilized Rachel
We all oooo-ed looking at it, and that’s when my mother did the amazing thing.
I have to preface this by stating that I came from careful parents. They were brought up during the depression, and my mom knew how to make every molecule count. They never spent more money than they had to – and subsequently had their house paid off by our third move. In other words, they didn’t spoil themselves. Or us. Ever. My mother had the same bottle of Chanel n. 5 on her dresser for at least ten years.
But on that day, in that place, as I stood across from Brenda with that bracelet on my arm, my mother said, “I’m going to buy it for you.” My mother – on an wild whim – gave me something un-practical, extravagant and truly beautiful. Me, their very difficult, weird, always a pain child.
I was pretty stunned.
Fast forward. When I wear this bracelet, I feel connected with my mom. Like maybe I wasn’t that awful. Like maybe there was something redeeming and likeable about me after-all. And I found that I wanted to share this gift with my children – this feeling of being loved, connected, forgiven for your weirdnesses and eccentricities. This connection with my Mom. And the flash of loveliness I had felt—I wanted them to feel that, to have owned it themselves. So over the years, as our business grew, I’d call Brenda and buy another bracelet. She’d tell me what she had, and I’d have her send the one that felt right. All different, but all the same essential, elegant design. I collected enough for each daughter I’d have in my life. And later, for sister/daughter/friends of special degree.
Early on, I begged Brenda for the name of the artists, and she gave me the names about five times; every time I got them, I lost them. The amazing silversmiths were Genevieve and Curtis Harvey, a Navajo couple from New Mexico. The bracelet is their own peculiar design. I have never, ever seen the like anywhere I’ve ever gone. These are people Brenda loves still—such good people. Such wonderful people.
I just wanted to write to them so they would know how what they had made had become part of my happiest life. And how their work had connected mother to daughter, and would connect more daughters with mothers. How the beauty their hands had shaped had brought joy to an entire circle of women.
I kept my little hoard of bracelets for years. The first one, I gave to Gin the day she was married. The second went to Lorri, at her wedding. Chaz, whose birthstone is opal, received hers, all opal ovals, the day she graduated from college. Geneva, who had patiently walked us through the basics of horse ownership, and who had come miles with her truck and trailer to pick up my injured colt when I, just days before sending Murphy away on his two year mission, was too freaked out do for myself – she got one. And Rachel. My Rachel. Then Chaz wanted one for Chelsea, her very best friend, and Chelsea wanted one for her mother, and Laura joined the family—
And so it went.
I seem to remember that I might have written to Genevieve once in all those years. I probably sent the letter to Brenda for passing on. But I don’t remember. I hope I did, because I always meant to. Meant to for seventeen years.
I badly wanted them to know that the work of their hands had become a joyful tradition in my family—our sisterhood verified in silver.
The last time we went through Pagosa, last summer – a road trip with Murphy and Chaz and our Chelsea, we stopped at the shop at near nightfall – and in a rain storm. Brenda was just closing up. But when we came in, she threw open the doors and took us straight into the back. We looked at everything – tried on rings and cuffs and patted pottery. Brenda gave Murphy a ceremonial wedding pot when she found out he was going to be married. When we tried on the Harvey cuffs, she told us how sick Curtis was. And that’s when I found out he was also an independent Baptist minister in New Mexico. She was worried about him, then. He was getting old and had been pretty seriously sick for the last long while. “There may soon be no more of these,” she said, as she put the velvet case in front of us.
We had a really beautiful time there, then had to drive on—taking off into the dark, wet night, driving down the almost deserted mountain road through the dangers of the elk run, five hours to the flats, me hunched over the wheel dodging the deer that shot out of the forest in front of us. That was in early June.
But that isn’t the end of the story. We drove back home that same way, up into the mountains, just to see Brenda once more. But when we stopped at Rainbow Gifts, Brenda wasn’t herself. It struck me odd, like she didn’t seem to want to talk much. I was afraid we’d offended her somehow. Or maybe she was just busy or worried about something. It’s troubled me ever since.
But I was looking up Curtis Harvey one more time last week, still wanting to write that letter. And that’s when I found a piece written about him on a site called Legacy. I think I understand now. He had died two weeks before we’d passed through Pagosa. Brenda hadn’t heard yet on our first pass through. I’m thinking that she’d had the news by the time we came through again. I had come to buy just one more of those bracelets. And I don’t think she wanted to tell me what she herself hated to know.
There is still a space in the circle. Just one. For a reason.
And there will be no more of those bracelets.
Because one of the two lovely people who made them has died. I wish I knew where Genevieve was. I’d go there. It’s just so strange—that the care and love and artistry of people I never met could have been such a strong color in the weave of our family history. I loved the Harveys without ever meeting them. But I will remember them my whole life long.
So here are a few little links – because Curtis Harvey is a man worth recognizing. I know that most of you don’t follow links, but I love these songs – one a hymn in Dinee. There used to be another song he had done with his guitar, a sweet hymn in English – but sadly it’s no longer findable. Please. Just look at his face. And know that he was a good and lovely man. Genevieve – may heaven watch over you always. You have my thanks for adding beauty to my life. My deep thanks.
