our grandmas’ copycat jewelry

all vietnamese grandmas wear the same jewelry. it’s a given fact. a dark emerald green jewel in the center haloed by golden details. copy and paste for their necklace, earrings, and bracelets. perhaps they all get it from the same overseas manufacturer. but regardless, all granddaughters are fooled into believing the unique beauty and value in each copycat jewelry. we are given the privilege of sitting on our grandma’s lap and watching in awe as they, with trembling but precise fingers, unclasp their necklace and lay it gently—preciously—onto our open palm. like a gift, a treasure, a secret passed down from generation to generation (they have performed the same ritual on our mothers and their daughters-in-law). a fleeting moment of connection through a material item before it is plucked out of our hands and returned to its rightful place.

“when you are older,” our grandma would tell us when we demanded to have some more time with it, “you will have my jewelry.” and we would be delighted and placated by their answer, each and every time. a copycat response as well.

what we did not realize at a young age was how we would grow to resent those words. because our grandmas did not think to inform us—warn us—of what they meant. what they meant to us. what they meant for themselves.

because there was little our grandmas could have taken with them when they fled war and carnage. there was limited time to consider what else to bring other than the necessities of survival. so for them to take a box, or even boxes upon boxes, of jewelry, all the same emerald green and gold, it meant necessity. it meant that these accessories were limbs that could not be wrenched from themselves without causing significant harm. they meant following a tradition that started in their homeland and would continue to their new home with the next generations. they meant rubbing their necklace or bracelet between their fingers and being reminded of a place far into their memories and thousands of miles away from their grasp.

but when they said, “you will have my jewelry”?

the implication of what that meant was left unanswered until it was too late to ask:

the stories, the memories, and the traditions embedded into those hundreds of thousands of copycats, scattered across the globe,

for the vessels were no longer needed as reminders, as physical anchors that could not be given up without being a betrayal to their body and soul, tied to a small country across the waters.

the jewelry was passed on. and with that last parting gift, they were able to pass on, heading back home, now within their grasp and

away

from

ours.

just as the jewelry acts as a link to our heritage, so too do they become a part of our grandmas—no, not copycats. but something much more precious and sacred than that, as we rub our necklace or bracelet between our trembling and precise fingers and

are reminded.

and they are remembered.