Back in the 70s, charm bracelets were a common gift for girls. Typically girls got the bracelet with one or two “charms” as a first gift and then additional charms for birthdays and Christmases ever after.

Charms were little silver representations of some hobby or activity that the girl liked to do.

I loved my charm bracelet. I have kept it in a box in my closet for decades now. It lives with a bunch of other sentimental jewelry that I no longer wear, but cannot part with.

I recently bought some of those tiny silver polishing cloths to shine up some old jewelry and decided to clean my charm bracelet.

As we very eagerly await the birth of my granddaughter sometime within the next two weeks, I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to show it to her and tell her about the meaning of all the charms.

There are 17 charms on my bracelet. Most represent things that were important to me as a child and teenager.

Counterclockwise from 1 o’clock:

1. Santa’s sleigh (I loved Christmas!)
2. An upright piano, just like the one I played
3. A Camp Fire Girls 5-years charm (I had forgotten how important the CFG were to me)
4. A set of silver bells (not sure why I had those, but I’m assuming they were Christmas-related)
5. A Camp Fire Girls 6-years charm
6. The B-1 Bomber (Unusual, yes, but my Dad was an engineer and a pilot and his company made some navigational components for the B-1. He was always going to California on business and he must have brought this charm back from one of his trips.)
7. An ice skate – I loved figure skating.
8. A tall ship, probably the USS Constitution. The bicentennial in 1976 was a very big deal in Massachusetts. The tall ships visit to Boston was a part of it.
9. A baton (I loved twirling and being a majorette in high school)
10. A tennis racket and ball (I had forgotten, but I was quite serious about tennis for several years. I made it to the club finals in singles one summer. I played on the high school team for a year or two.)
11. A starfish – I loved the beach. (I ill-advisedly took a starfish home with me one time and that thing reeked like hell for months. It was probably still alive and I didn’t realize it. Poor starfish.)
12. Mickey Mouse – I was one of those very lucky kids in the 70s whose parents took them to Disneyland.
13. A heart with my birthstone in it
14. Another Camp Fire Girls charm – my mom was a leader of our group
15. The Eiffel Tower (I hadn’t been to Paris back then, but I must’ve liked the idea. I sure did love it later on in life.)
16. A saguaro 🌵 cactus that says Tucson. I had an aunt and six cousins that lived out West. My grandmother would periodically move out there to help them.
17. The last one is a bit of a mystery. Maybe it’s supposed to be a bicycle. I loved riding my bike. But it looks a bit more like a moped. I remember seeing mopeds a lot on our visits to Nantucket and Block Island, but people were constantly getting seriously injured on them. I don’t think my parents ever let us ride them, so let’s just go with bicycle for that one.