Simple Life

Limp Excuse

Finding a Good Story for a Bad Knee

By Jim Dodson

I’ve been limping along with a bum knee for exactly six months. One thing I’ve discovered — the painful way — is that I’m not a natural limper.

There are some people who are born to limp and look darn good doing it. Forest Gump, Ben Franklin and Dr. Strangelove all limped, and just look what it did for their careers. Ditto Grandpa on The Real McCoys, Napoleon Bonaparte and James Arness of Gunsmoke fame, who limped from a leg wound that won him a bronze star during the Second World War.

Then there are the athletes who limp. One of the greatest moments in the history of baseball — the best performance by a limping athlete, if you will — happened in the World Series of 1988 when an injured Kirk Gibson, nursing a bum left knee exactly like mine, startled fans by limping out of the dugout to pinch hit for the L.A. Dodgers, down 4-3 with two out in the bottom of the ninth in the first game of the series against the mighty Oakland A’s. Ace Dennis Eckersley was on the mound throwing smoke. Gibson somehow worked a full count and then swatted a home run to win the game over the right field fence.

My limping, on the other hand, is downright embarrassing. I look nothing like Kirk Gibson limping around the bases while the crowd in L.A. loses their minds and the great Curt Gowdy hollers in disbelief, “It’s a miracle, I tell you! A miracle.”

A bum knee, in short, needs a dramatic narrative. But my limp looks like a grocery cart missing a front wheel or an old pirate who lost part of his peg leg in a tavern brawl.

People who see me limping along like an old pirate pushing a broken grocery cart feel so sorry for me. I can see it in their faces — pure, undisguised limping pity.

“Oh, dear, are you all right?” a tender-hearted granny-sort asked me the other evening as I limped through Harris Teeter to buy my first quart of seasonal egg nog.

“Yes ma’am,” I said truthfully. “It only hurts when I walk.”

“Oh, sweetie, how did you injure it?” she wondered, the picture of deep granny-type concern.

I told her the truth. “If you must know, I recently leapt out of a helicopter into a raging flooded river to save a litter of golden retriever puppies about to go over a waterfall in a washtub.”

She was so moved she could hardly speak.

“That is so brave,” she finally managed, wiping a tear and hugging me.

“Yes ma’am. The best thing is, every one of the puppies survived. Now I’m finding them all good homes for Christmas.”

True, I lied. You probably guessed that by now. But having a bum knee and a sorry limp with no narrative at Christmas can change you in ways that make Dr. Strangelove look like a Boy Scout selling homemade brownies.

How could I possibly tell that sweet little granny-like person with an honest face that I simply hurt it while playing golf on a rainy afternoon back in May? That all I did was make a sorry swing with a sand wedge and feel the sand shift beneath my left foot and something in my knee twist. What kind of silly injury is that?

Back in my early teens and twenties, after all, my own mother used to call me Hurricane Jimmy because I displayed a talent for injuring myself in all kinds of interesting ways: falling off my bike or out of trees, tripping into open holes, coming home with a bloody nose or flesh wound after every sort of neighborhood game. I never cried and healed fast. Getting injured was my thing.

For example, I nearly put out my right eye by sliding home in a Little League baseball game and colliding with the catcher, a moment that briefly gained me the admiration of classmates and the attention of the elusive Della Hockaday. I got to wear an eye patch to school for a week and was thus encouraged to present Della a mood ring from Woolworths, which she wore for almost two whole weeks before giving it back in order to go steady with Woody C. Ham, who had a more interesting injury than mine, having broken his arm by falling down the bus steps. He had a big honking cast on his arm that the whole school got to sign, making him an instant celebrity. By then my eye patch was gone, my heroic baseball injury forgotten, and so was any hope of romance with Della Hockaday —my first hard lesson in love and personal injury.

That next winter, while skiing in western Maryland, I crashed through a snow fence and wound up spending New Year’s Eve with my right leg in a sling at a Catholic hospital where the nuns made a big fuss over me. I believe this might be where I had my first sip of eggnog — straight nog, of course. So I owe the nuns that. But it just wasn’t the same as Della Hockaday.

Rather disappointingly, I played two years of organized football but never had a decent injury to speak of until college, where I foolishly attempted to make the university’s team as an invited walk on and tore apart my dodgy ski bum knee and required surgery. I spent a month hobbling on crutches with a leg cast that made Woody C. Ham’s look like a cheap trick just to get Della Hockaday in the mood.

Later, I crashed gloriously headlong into the bleachers during a heated intramural basketball game that required a dozen stitches in my forehead, but made me look more like a son of Frankenstein than Hurricane Jimmy. On the plus side, that very next summer, working on a crew putting up lightning rods on barns, I drove a steel rod threw my hand and wound up being the head usher at my college roomie’s wedding with a right hand swaddled up like baby Jesus. I was a big hit with the bridesmaids.

In my twenties I played on three different softball teams in Atlanta and wound up having that same bum right knee seriously operated on twice more, each time milking my injury for all it was worth.

Then something strange and totally out of character happened. I moved to New England, got married, became a father, built my own a house on a forested hill and became a crazed landscape gardener. During those two decades I traveled the world walking golf courses and rebuilt the ancient stone walls that surrounded our property, with plenty of cuts and bruises, but no major injuries worth mentioning. I even spent six weeks in Africa chasing crazy plant hunters though some of the scariest terrains on earth with nothing more to show than a bad tick bite and a few gouges. I was informed by our guide that the tick bite might cause a terrible case of jungle fever and I might wake up in the dead of night shouting out for Kim Bassinger or at least Della Hockaday. But sadly, it just never happened.

Where had Hurricane Jimmy gone? Life is so bittersweet and short when you’re living from one injury to the next.

All of which makes the silly little injury to my “good” knee in a sand trap last May so embarrassing — maybe even a true sign of age and creeping decrepitude. All it took was a little twist in the sand and I’ve been limping like Chester on Gunsmoke ever since.

The orthopedic specialist who examined the pathetic knee in question pointed out that I’m too young for new artificial knees and suggested I simply shut up and give my sissified injury time to heal on its own, which I more or less have — except for the shutting up part.

At the risk of sounding like that sixth grade Lothario Woody C. Ham, since every other person you meet here in the Sandhills can boast of either a new artificial hip or pair of new knees and is more than happy to show off with a brief tango or tell you about their advanced aerobics class at First Health, I’ve created my own dramatic narrative to explain my pathetic limp in grocery stores.

True, six months has officially come and gone and — yes — the sissy knee feels better and my limp seems to be finally fading a bit. But this ordeal is so unworthy of my happy Hurricane Jimmy days, I’ve had to resort to bold narrative measures.

Which explains why I’m drinking straight egg nog with both hands this Christmas and telling myself (and anyone else who will listen) that at least I saved those adorable puppies in the nick of time and found them a warm safe home for the holidays.

Wherever she’s gone, I hope Della — depending on her mood — might be proud.

O.Henry Ending

Listening with Your Heart

What my dad — and my dog — taught me

 

By James Colasanti Jr.

Christmas is my favorite time of the year, largely because of my childhood memories involving dogs.

I have always slept with dogs, my unconditional loving companions. From a few days after my birth, I slept with Butchy, the dog who taught me to have empathy for all. And now, 71 years later, with a 21-year-old Chihuahua named Minnie. It all began with my father, James Sr.

In 1949, my pregnant mother was busy preparing the evening meal when my father entered the room holding a small black-white-and-tan terrier in his big Italian hands. Of course, she heard the sharp, high-pitched yipping before she saw him.

“Look, Mary, look!” he exclaimed, holding out the frisky, wriggling pup he would name Butchy. “She is just too feisty to have a girl’s name. Butchy will make a great companion for our son.” (Although gender reveal was a thing of the future, my father knew in his heart that my mother was having a boy.) Following my birth, my parents put Butchy in my cradle every night to keep me warm and to alert them to my needs.

When I graduated from my crib, guess who snuggled in the bed with me? Well into my teenage years, Butchy slept alongside me. And every night, one of my parents would visit my room to check on me.

I recall one particular Yuletide evening being very special. I was 15. As the hall light cast its glow into my bedroom, Butchy looked up toward the door as my father entered. As dad sat on the edge of my bed, Butchy raised her head from my chest. He patted her head as he spoke.

My father — who was 50 when I was born — was a gentle man, a philosopher and an animal whisperer in the truest sense. If he were to sit on a tree stump in the middle of the woods with an ear of dried corn, a deer would be eating out of his hands within minutes. He was the one who taught me my understanding of dogs and the meaning of Christmas.

“James,” he began, “the best gifts I can give you this Christmas are the little lessons I have learned over the years.” What followed was the wisdom of a man who barely got past the eighth grade. I can still hear the cadence of his voice. “The love of a dog is the magic that binds you together,” he told me. “And it only takes one dog to change your life forever.” (For me, that was Butchy.) “When I come into your room at night, she always has her head on your chest. It’s her way of making sure you’re OK. And because she loves you, she also listens to you with her heart when you talk to her.”

My dad had a lot more to say about the heart. “Your heart is the center of your life. It is the source from which all of your love flows. Whenever someone is speaking to you, you will never go wrong if you listen with your heart.” And then he shared something that his father — my grandfather — once told him. “Remember, son, that you were loved by a man who loved dogs — who loved dogs more than he loved people. And do you know why he told me this?”

“Why?” I asked, yawning.

“Because he knew that — unlike people — the only time a dog will break your heart is when it dies.”

As the hall light faded, I heard my father whisper, as he had so many times before, “Son, if you follow your heart, you can make every day feel like Christmas.”  OH

James Colasanti Jr. is a Maxwell Medallion award-winning author and member of the Dog Writers Association of America. A past president of the Animal Rescue & Foster Program of Greensboro, he shares his home with four rescue dogs.

Quirky Holidays

At the Harwood home, more is more

By Cynthia Adams   •   Photographs By Amy Freeman

 

Before the first hint of the holiday season — and yes, even before Thanksgiving — collector and antique reseller Brooke Harwood’s condo begins shimmering and shining for what will be a protracted and festive season, with trinkets and valuables she has acquired over 30 years. Soon, the space transforms, as if a fairy godmother waved a magic wand, indulging a child’s most whimsical winter fantasies.

Perhaps you recall meeting Harwood inside her French-inspired condo in the pages of this magazine in July 2016. But you’ve never seen her home like this.

Eight trees — two full-sized and six tabletops, all festooned with sparkles, twinkling lights, baubles and plumes — consume the 1,300-square-foot space. The tallest sweep the ceiling.

With visions of sugarplums, decorative cakes — and even potato-chip cookies — dancing in her head, Harwood fluffs her nest. She pulls boxes of vintage treasures from storage. These include ornaments, toys, signage, plumage in all colors, crèches and tabletop ceramic trees, her favorites? White and studded with aqua. (“I have so many ceramic trees — maybe one hundred.”) Snugly they nestle among eclectic accents, artwork, porcelains and furniture.   

“I have a full attic,” she notes, “and it is filled with Christmas decorations.” She jokes. Is her unbridled passion: hoarding or collecting?

Harwood has a special weakness for Asian-inspired art (chinoiserie in design-speak) and knows from years of reselling vintage and antique pieces that the quirky is equally prized. Often, there is an initial color theme — or themes. Remember, she reminds me, “I love aqua.”

Harwood’s exuberant holiday décor is completely unrestrained and a showcase for her eclectic Christmas collectibles, mostly tinged with silver and gold, sparkle, shine and chic. Once sprung out of attic storage, it matters little if a chosen object is valuable or not; she isn’t pretending to do anything so much as to dazzle and have a wink-wink-nod-nod bit of fun, indulging her love of color, twinkle and panache.

Her style channels Iris Apfel, the NYC design maven who famously said, “more is more and less is a bore.”  Like Apfel, Harwood also resists packing up the sparkly bits until after the New Year has dawned, but it isn’t practical to resist. (Apfel, however, keeps her holiday décor up year-round in her Palm Beach condo.) 

A frenzy of annual effort is inversely timed with a longstanding Harwood family tradition. Her decorating kicks off in mid-November as college football winds down. 

“I always have people over for the last weekend of college football for turkey chili and have all my Christmas up by then.” 

When she’s done, kitschy collectibles mix and mingle with finery, keeping the décor light and jolly. 

Antique pickers like Harwood with an eye for the quirky, exceptional and valuable, understand the deft mix of high- and low-style. 

In the end, Harwood’s home radiates like a kaleidoscope (“I love those vintage color wheels!”). 

Some rooms are kept mostly traditional, like the den, where she decorated a tree in red-and-green (with pops of blue accents.)  Other trees feature nontraditional colors, especially jolts of pink and aqua. Aqua? As mentioned, it’s a personal favorite — and what a cheerful and unexpected holiday touch. Gourmet cakes by DeeDee Williams are freewheeling, too, and Harwood cannot stop at merely one. “They are just so visual and fun!” she says.

Vintage collectibles, however, usually dominate: Signage and toys and religious figures find a place on every shelf, table and nook, spilling outside to the porch and balcony.

“How did the Christmas vintage collecting happen?” Harwood wonders aloud. She surveys the living room, where silver trays are topped with antique figurines and a corner cupboard is filled with antique toys. 

“Well, the love of vintage carolers, the japanned things I collect, for instance? I got that from my grandmother.”

Sentimental favorites always make the cut. Her grandmother’s collection of Christmas decorations and ceramic trees are dear to her.

Make no mistake, she does not focus on Christmas décor exclusively. Harwood prizes Herend china, porcelain figurines, antique boxes (she owns more than 100), artwork of every ilk, antique papier mâché pieces and widely varied curiosities.

She is driven to search out finds, all part of “the thrill of the hunt.”

Even as a college student, Harwood scoured for treasures. (She still uses a desk she bought for $100 as a UNC-Chapel Hill coed. For Christmas, the desk features a vintage crèche.)

Following graduation from Carolina, Harwood entered the corporate world in Columbia, South Carolina. 

In early 2000, she returned to Greensboro, where parents, Rocky and Brenda Harwood, live in Starmount Forest. She “left her corporate self behind” and went to work for Anne Carlson at Carlson Antiques. Here she educated herself further. 

Harwood now considers it the highest compliment when praised for her buying skills, “for her eye.”

In 2002, she moved into Kings Arms in New Irving Park. For a short while, her grandmother also kept a home in the quaintly brick-walled community with its own French crest. 

Former resident Harvey Lineberry wrote about businessman and congressman Eugene “Gene” Johnston building the French-inspired units (designed by A.D. Woodruff Jr.) in 1965 as luxury apartments, which were later converted to condos. The Kings Arms project was Johnston’s first real estate endeavor. 

The design may have been a nod to Montbéliard, Greensboro’s sister city in France. 

According to Guilford College’s Guilfordian, President Eisenhower created the sister cities program in 1956. In addition to Montbéliard, Greensboro has two others: Buiucani in Moldova, and Yingkou in China. Montbéliard happened to be home to the Lorillard family, who owned Lorillard Tobacco in Greensboro. 

Although Harwood agrees that the interior design at Kings Arms should probably bear this French influence in mind, she is not constricted by that idea.

Her style is far more freewheeling.

She often drives as far as Charleston for auctions and estate sales, and Christmas is always in her thoughts, even in the heat of summer, while on the hunt in the Low Country. If she spies it and loves it, then Harwood snags it. “Vintage Christmas things are very hot,” she says. “Even things like vintage calendars.” 

Toys, pastel and metallic ornaments, vintage Santas and signage, porcelain créches and figurines all go into her black SUV. Some are destined for resale. Others? She’ll make room in the condo.

Her collecting enthusiasm never dims, even after many years. Harwood still requests a Herend porcelain every Christmas. 

“I’m bad,” she grimaces, pausing to open — what else? — a crisp French Chenin Blanc to toast the holidays. “I’m still addicted.”

But the porcelains do seem right at home. 

 

 

 

 

Brooke Harwood Christmas Décor and Entertaining Tips

Harwood allows décor to spill out from the indoors to the outdoors balcony, which is fully furnished with vintage iron furniture, foo dogs, Chinese stools and lamps. Toy mice are poised in a gazebo.  (The mice were once displayed in the now defunct Thalhimer’s Department Store in downtown Greensboro.)

She advises:

“Group vintage Christmas figurines together on large silver or faux bamboo trays.”

“Entertain with a vintage twist, too!  Serve eggnog — the real deal — not imitations!”

“Serve trays of old-school cookies and treats. Think pecan tassies, cheese straws and potato-chip cookies with a Christmas twist!”

“Stock coolers of sodas and beers in red and green cans — ginger ale, Coca Cola, hard cider in green bottles, Budweiser, etc.”

“I’ve used local baker DeeDee Williams at My Sweet Little Bake Shop for Christmas cakes, and placed them throughout the house for parties.  One favorite of mine is on the balcony outside, a cheery penguin cake! I placed four cakes in various rooms — some topped with Christmas trees, and another is a candy cane tree.”

“Vintage ceramic Christmas trees can be grouped together on a sideboard in a dining room or console table in a foyer, which really adds a ‘wow’ factor to a room. I particularly look for ones that are unique colors and ones of different sizes.”

“Antique and vintage toys are great to decorate under the tree with.  And don’t save Christmas presents for under the tree.  Stacks of presents on chairs, or in corners or on shelves around the house add color and interest.”

“Vintage advent calendars make great conversation pieces.
My favorites are handcrafted felt ones, and wooden ones
with little drawers.”

“If you must go artificial, like me, I do love an artificial flocked tree!  But nothing says vintage like a white or even pink tabletop tree from the ’50s or ’60s. And vintage color wheels are a must.

Charmed, I’m Sure

For five local women, their jewelry tells the story of their lives

By Katherine Snow Smith   •   Photographs by Mark Wagoner

 

A baby boy. A chance meeting. A summer job. A new home. A family trip.

Long before life’s momentous events were aired on Zoom, posted on Instagram or even forced on unsuspecting dinner guests via old-school Kodak slide carousels, they were embedded in charm bracelets. A family history dangling from a woman’s wrist, making a beautiful conversation piece for sharing special stories.

Charm bracelets were in their heyday in the 1950s and ’60s. But plenty of women have kept up the tradition or are proudly wearing their mother’s or grandmother’s.

Though most of the traditional charms aren’t custom, they can be — and some are — handmade. Many have intricate moving pieces. A lever moves can-can dancers’ legs on a charm from Paris. A tiny letter engraved with “I love you” slides out of a gold envelope. The keys of a typewriter go up and down.

These are not the mass marketed charms sold at thousands of malls and airports across the world today. Some jewelry stores still carry traditional charms, but many “old fashioned” pieces are only found on vintage bracelets passed through generations, at antique shops, estate sales and trunk shows specializing in this unique collectible.

Here are the stories of five charm bracelets dangling and jingling in the Triad.

 

The Story of Your Life

“You never stop collecting charms, that’s the beauty of it,” says Katie Redhead, co-founder of Tyler Redhead & McAlister Real Estate in Greensboro. “You think I’m done with this necklace? Wrong.”

Several bracelets and necklaces chain together the history of her life and clearly reveal how much Redhead loves charms. (See one of her necklaces on page 50.)

She tells the story of each charm in rapid fire. The boat with the turquoise hull is from Barcelona, a prime spot for collecting charms. The little house with a roof that opens revealing a little bed was her mother’s. The gold lion reclining on a turquoise base is because she’s a Leo. The tiny cowbell that actually rings is from Switzerland. 

The coins — some as big as a gold watch, some as small as a pencil eraser — all dangling on one bracelet are from her grandfather’s coin collection from around the world.

Her parents bought the tiny gold Coke bottle while visiting Atlanta. 

“When my parents went on a trip, they’d bring me something. Sometimes it was a doll, but I always hoped it was a charm and usually it was,” Redhead says. 

While charms were popular with many young girls in the 1950s and ’60s, Redhead never gave up her appreciation for them as an adult. 

“I used to haunt Schiffman’s downtown for an estate sale,” she says. “They would call me and say: ‘I got something down here you really ought to see.’” Sometimes when family members inherit a charm bracelet, they want the bracelet but not the charms — so they dismantle it, Redhead explains. 

“They lose, I win,” she adds. 

Glen Lavinder, president of The Pink Door antiques, always keeps an eye out for her as well. 

One of her loves, or perhaps addictions, is finding distinctive charms.

“If you are a true charm lover, you don’t get them all at one place. It is a search-and-seek,” she says. 

She also loves the stories behind each charm. 

“People say, ‘Katie, does this one open? Where’d you get this one? What does this one mean?’” she says. “Lay down your charm bracelet and it will tell the story of your life.”

 

Something to Talk About

Judith Williams thumbs through the charms on a treasured gold bracelet.

“They tell the story of us,” the longtime Greensboro resident says. 

One of her favorite charms is a little gold house with a tiny car attached to a chain that allows it to go in and out of the garage. 

“This was my mother’s. My father gave it to her when they built their house,” Williams says. 

Another really special one: the gold hand that represents her summer in college when she was a secretary at a camp — the Children’s Fresh Air Farm — in her native Birmingham, Alabama.

“Children from the inner city came to the top of Red Mountain for a month. Each one planted their own garden. Dental students came and fixed their teeth, doctors took care of their medical needs,” Williams recounts. “We all were in the great outdoors together. It was a great way to spend a summer.”

Her bracelet also includes a childhood locket and a lion for her alma mater, Shade Valley High School. Adjacent is a tiny Omicron Delta Kappa key, the service fraternity her husband, Craven Williams, joined at Wake Forest. Also, a disk from when he was president of Greensboro College in the 1990s.

Williams also has a necklace with special charms, including her grandfather’s watch fob and a sun with the words “Good Juju” engraved on it. Her grandchildren call her Juju.

She also has books on charms picturing exceptional pieces of jewelry. There’s a gold heart with an internal ticking to mimic a heartbeat given to Michael DeBakey, a pioneer in heart surgery, and a cross of Cartier diamonds that Edward VIII bestowed on Wallis Simpson. 

Williams happily admits she’s a charm nut. She used to lead talks on charm bracelets for various women’s groups in Greensboro. 

“I told everyone to bring their charm bracelets. It was amazing. Very few people came without one,” she says. “So many little girls in the ’50s had one. They’d buy a charm when they went on a trip or get one for a special birthday. Like I said, they tell the stories of our lives.”

Reminders of Family

Susan Boydoh’s husband, Bob, gave her a charm bracelet after they were married. The Raleigh native who lives in Greensboro has filled it with symbols of family times together. 

She found a silver historic house in Charleston because that’s where they got engaged. There are silver baby boots engraved with the birthdates of her son and daughter. The sea turtle is from Cabo, Mexico, in honor of earning her scuba diving certification there. 

The Mickey Mouse ears mark a Disney cruise her family took with her parents when her son was 5.

“I look at this charm and I remember how he had no interest in seeing all the Disney characters,” she says. “He wanted to go up on the bridge and see the harbor master or who drove the ship. My dad loved that because he wanted to talk to him about how the ship worked.” 

Since her father died 10 years ago, Boydoh especially appreciates having a special reminder of this family time together. Much better than a T-shirt or other souvenir that’s long gone. 

As an agent with Tyler Redhead & McAlister, she’s a colleague and friend of Redhead and caught her contagious love for charms. 

“I saw how Katie has all these different things that aren’t actual charms that she made into charms,” Boydoh says. “Now I have made my high school class ring into a charm and this beautiful little floating heart from a necklace.”  

Vivid Memories

The silver charm engraved with a globe came from the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. It stirred 57-year-old memories that resurfaced in vivid detail for Frann White, who lives in High Point. She got the charm in 10th grade when she was there on a trip with her mom and a group of friends. 

“We ate waffles in the Belgium pavilion. In the Japanese pavilion we took off our shoes and sat on the floor,” White recalls. They rode in a car through buildings highlighting General Motors’ and Ford’s latest innovations.

The miniature silver model of Mount Vernon took her back to a gift shop with rows of old, wooden windows and creaky hardwood floors.

“The senior class of Trinity High School always went to Washington, D.C., and Virginia,” she says. “This cross is from the National Cathedral. Wherever I went, I always looked for charms.”

She knows her bracelet dates back to at least eighth grade because it includes a charm given to her by an early sweetheart. “My love I give to you my heart,” is engraved onto a small heart. 

A replica of a birth certificate is engraved with the date and time of her birth, as well as her newborn weight. The whistle with chipped red, white and blue paint represents the year High Point was named an All-American City. 

Looking back at her time in high school, she says, “I loved wearing my charm bracelet. I loved the noise,” remembering the sound it made when she sat at her desk writing. “We must have driven the teachers crazy, all the girls wearing charm bracelets.”

She has another bracelet with more charms from her adult years, including a piece of actual lava from Hawaii and a miniature sombrero from Mexico. 

“When I wear these it really is like going down memory lane,” White says. “I have three nieces. One already has my mother’s and the other two will get mine.”

 

The Birthday Bracelet

When Ellen Bassett of Winston-Salem celebrated her 50th birthday at the Omni Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, Virginia., another friend planned quite the charming group gift. She asked the guests to each bring a charm representing something from their friendship with Bassett.

Throughout the night, the birthday girl received individually wrapped charms from her closest friends from various stages of life.

“It was so touching. All of them were so personal,” Bassett says.

She received an apple from someone she lived with in New York, a motorboat from a longtime friend who worked with her at Camp Seafarer, an airplane from a traveling buddy, a charm with her birthday engraved on it from her parents, and e ven a little silver swimsuit from a dear friend who signified their first chance meeting at a Belk’s dressing room.

Now, 50 charms fill a very special bracelet.

“This was the most incredible gift. It’s stuffed with so many great memories,” Bassett says. “It makes me feel loved whenever I wear it.”  OH

Katherine Snow Smith is a North Carolina native who has worked as a journalist throughout the Carolinas. She owns two charm bracelets — one silver, one gold — her favorite jewelry for any wardrobe.