About Rebecca Eckler
Since becoming pregnant with her daughter Rowan, Canadian journalist and author Rebecca Eckler has penned three hilarious books, including the best-selling Knocked Up. Catch Rebecca’s weekly unique perspective on motherhood and single parenthood.
If you’re the mother of a child who likes arts and crafts then you’ve been through this: Your child will bring home some sort of art work from school or camp (sometimes very good, sometimes average, sometimes two lines on a piece of paper). You’ll gush to your child about their artistic talent and how they may be the next Picasso. Within three days, that piece of paper will be in the trash. Sometimes my daughter’s artwork is in the trash three minutes after she hands it over. (Yes, I’m harsh. But I’m also her mother and can tell when she’s really tried at something or was just killing time.)
Now Rowan is into making bracelets and, I got to admit, she’s pretty good. She came home from camp with an amazing beaded bracelet she made. A couple days later, she came home with a fantastic anklet.
I asked her to make me one the following day. She did! So, for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been walking around with a multi-coloured beaded bracelet with four little flower beads – purple, pink, baby blue, and green. I love it.
Though you’d THINK that this multi-coloured beaded bracelet would match with everything, it turns out it matches with nothing. It looks like a six-year-old made it! But I love it. I’ve now been sporting this bracelet everywhere: a formal event, a cocktail party, even a business lunch. The thing is, I can’t take it off.
I can’t take it off because my daughter made it for me, and I love that. Crazy as it sounds, wearing it makes me feel close to her at all times.
A few days later, I noticed my friend wearing three green gummy bracelets on her wrist. “Are they seriously coming back?” I asked her. “I used to love gummy bracelets. I used to wear a dozen of them.”
“Sort of,” my friend responded. “My daughter gave them to me, because they match with hers and she’s calling them our ‘friendship’ bracelets, so I can’t take them off.”
“I love that,” I told my friend laughing. I love it because my friend is a fancy real estate agent and has to meet high-end clientele, dressed in uncomfortable looking designer business suits, with GREEN gummy bracelets around her wrist.
The more I look around, the more I noticed that mothers everywhere are wearing their children’s camp creations of beaded bracelets and necklaces. I don’t care where I have to be, or what sort of function I have to attend, I’m keeping the bracelet on at all times. “Oh, my daughter made that for me,” I’ll say, whenever someone asks what that bracelet is about.
On one wrist, I’m wearing a $5,000 Cartier Love Bracelet. On the other, I’m wearing my daughter’s creation, probably worth – monetarily anyway - 69 cents. Guess which one I like better? (The answer is my daughter’s!) Do you wear your young children’s jewellery collection?
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