All my grandparents are long dead and I only have memories of one. Grandma Edith, my mother’s mother, died when I was 9 and my mother actually gave me this jewelry set to remember her by.

You’ll notice the earrings are old clip-on style; my grandmother never had her ears pierced and regretted the damage clip-on earrings did to her earlobes, so she made both her daughters get their ears properly pierced. My mother was so scared of the needles she put off her piercing until her late teens, but she never regretted it. Decades later she pierced her second holes herself on a whim. And she made sure all four of her daughters got their ears pierced as well.

Some of us ran with it way farther than she meant us to, with several piercings and tattoos apiece. My grandmother would be rolling in her grave if she knew what her hatred of clip-ons has wrought.