A letter from a reader

At 63, I realized I had not worn a pair of earrings in three years

It was my granddaughter who noticed. She was going through the photographs from her brother’s graduation, and she held one up and said, Grandma, you never wear earrings any more. And I opened my mouth to say of course I do, and then I could not remember the last time. I am 63, I am not a writer, and I had a jewellery box on my dresser that had quietly become a drawer I did not open.

Then three different women asked me about a pair of earrings at church on Sunday, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

Here is how the drawer closes. Everything in it was one of two things. Tiny studs, the sensible kind, that nobody could see, including me. Or the big pairs I had bought for weddings and Christmases, which looked wonderful in the mirror at ten in the morning and were pulling by the time the salad came, and in my purse by dessert. So I stopped choosing between them. I chose neither. And for three years my ears were bare in every photograph, and I looked a little unfinished in all of them and could not have told you why.

Earrings nobody could see, or earrings I could not stand by lunch. For three years I wore neither.

Nobody decides to stop wearing earrings. It happens one sore lobe at a time, until the box on the dresser is just furniture.

Then Rosa leaned in to cut my hair

Rosa has done my hair for eleven years and she is not a woman who wears much. In June she leaned in with the scissors and there was a long soft gold oval hanging from each ear, plain, no stones, and it caught the light every time she moved. I asked if they were heavy. She unhooked one, and it clicked open on a little hinge, and she dropped it into my hand, and I honestly thought she had missed.

They are called the Opal, from Iris & Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. I ordered the gold that evening, fully expecting to send them back.

They did not go back. The drawer is open again.

What happened at church

I wore them on Sunday with a plain cream top and my hair tucked back, which I have not done in some time, because there was finally a reason to.

Three different women asked me where they were from before the coffee was poured. And Sue, who has known me twenty years and does not hand out compliments, said I looked like I had done something different and she could not work out what. From Sue, that is a standing ovation.

Here is why they work, as far as I can tell. They are long, an oval rather than a circle, so they do something for the neck and they show up in a photograph. They are light, properly light, hollow and thin, so there is nothing pulling at the lobe by lunch. The slim polished band twisted round the frosted one catches the light without a single stone to fall out. And the back is a little hinge that clicks shut, so there is nothing fiddly to drop on the bathroom floor. That is all there is to them, and it turns out that was everything I needed.

I have worn them nine days out of the last ten. To lunch, to the store, to the porch of an evening with nobody to see them but Frank, who has not noticed, which is entirely normal.

Three things I have learned since

One. Weight is the whole trick. Everything that had put me off earrings was the pull. Take that away and you can wear a proper size all day and forget it.

Two. Long beats big. An oval that hangs a little does more for a face our age than a great heavy circle, and it does it quietly.

Three. Gold and silver, and that is it. No colours to agonise over. The gold I own, and a silver, which I went back for. Rosa, I am told, wears the gold to everything.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Opal is $20.95. It was $42.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because a pair that looks like this in the department store case usually costs more than lunch for four.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and this is their final summer sale as they close this chapter of the shop.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman had written, “So light I forgot I had them on, and my daughter noticed them from across the room. First earrings in years I have worn two days running.” That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting on the porch with an iced tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If your jewellery box has become a drawer you do not open, it is not because you have stopped caring. It is because everything in it asked you to choose between being seen and being comfortable, and you were tired of choosing. This is the pair that does not ask.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the gold goes first. And once this stock is gone, it is gone.

My ears are back in the photographs.

Peggy