When we were visiting the up-north kids this past spring, Mathias made me a beaded necklace. He was in kindergarten and it was a string of random letters and sweet little beads from a kit. (Something roughly like this but geared towards slightly older kids, and with actual necklace chains.)

He made me a little choker, the length his mom wears (I thought that was observant) and proudly watched as she helped me put it on. I wore it all day and then, long after he’d gone to bed, Richard was helping me take it off when–CRASH!

There wasn’t a stopper at the end, so there they all were scattered across the floor. Grandparent quiet time fail.

We scooped them up hoping we hadn’t woken up the kids and, well, the easiest thing to do was to put them away in the little travel container for my hearing aids, and they quietly came home with us.

So Thanksgiving week there we were again and I had brought them with me in case he’d like to reassemble them–only, now he’s in first grade and reading so instead of picking letters that looked pretty in his eyes, I was wondering if he might want to spell out words this time? I didn’t even know if they had any more letter beads, though.

I brought it up when Mathias wasn’t right there to hear; I wanted his mom’s take on it first.

Sam said something about, oh, we’ve got the findings so they don’t fall off again, no worries.

But Lillian was in the room and she wanted to get right to fixing that for me. So she did. She made me a new necklace. She restrung everything at hand, the letters random as they were meant to be. The plastic fake Venetian glass bead. The embossed metal flower. Another that looks like a repurposed memory from the collection of antique teacups my father’s mother loved to collect. All the original beads, all put back together.

She got the finding attached at the end with some help from Sam so this time they would all stay on that chain like they were supposed to, and then looked up at me with those beautiful four-year-old eyes of innocence and counseled me solemnly, “Don’t tell Mathias.”

I was not expecting that and laughed like you do when the joy all comes out in a little burst at once, thinking, I will, though, honey, I will. Probably at a toast at his wedding someday. Or yours.