Elevators.  I think they’re a strangely uncelebrated life moment.  In business we often use them allegorically with “what is your 30-second elevator pitch?” or we laugh at the unspoken rules of elevator etiquette (where to stand, which direction to face, avoid being flatulent, etc.)  And we all use them – some of us more regularly than others.  But we don’t spend much time thinking about our journeys in them.  I recently became acquainted with constant elevator usage.  Not really a habit as much as a necessity, since I work on the sixth floor of a nine-story building.  I could take the stairs, and I often do if it’s a flight or two.  But in the early hours of the morning, as I’m hoofing it through the parking garage, across the third-level skywalk and into my building, sprinting up several flights stairs to my office is the furthest thing from my mind.

This is probably one of my happiest moments of the day, actually, for a multitude of reasons: the smells are pungent, the people are interesting that early in the morning, and no one feels pressured to make eye contact, let alone initiate small talk.  The lifts, and there are six of them, seem to run a little slow in the morning. So after I hit the “up” button, I back away from the door and simply stand. It is in these few extra morsels of time that I get to enjoy the smell of bacon wafting up from the first-floor cafeteria.  I’ve never seen it, but I hear the mass of pork they fry in the morning would impress even the heartiest of appetites.  It is also during this lull in my morning dash that I get to take inventory of those around me, the other souls who come to the office earlier than most.  There is the fresh up and comer with her Starbucks coffee, the suited man and his brief, the ol’ gal in comfortable shoes who remembers the building from five remodels ago.  We’re all there waiting, watching anxiously for the light above the door, then listening for the ping to prepare us for our entry into the box.  Why do we do this?  Why do we all stare at the space above the door in synchrony?  The doors glide open and we lurch, en masse, into the box.  It is in these miniscule moments that I experience a chocolate box of thoughts – never knowing if the passenger(s) randomly sharing the 7′ X 6′ space with me from one morning to the next will elicit a truffled smile or a gag.  I try to imagine their morning routine or guess which floor they will get off on or simply ponder what earthy force compelled them to throw those particular wardrobe pieces together.  If, by chance, my eyes meet those of a fellow passenger, I offer an understanding smile or possibly utter a weak “good morning.”  The time together is so brief and yet strangely intimate.

It is a shame that this once child-favorite activity has become routine and drone.  I doubt my morning commute will ever include a fight over who gets to push the buttons or all of us jumping simultaneously as the box stops.  But nonetheless, I enjoy these slivers of humanity, these quiet moments in reflection and the remote chance that I might even start my morning being inspired.

My grandmother was ninety-two when she died.  She did not have a peaceful or traumatic leaving, but one very suited to her life – tragic and regrettable, yet without complaint.  To try and write about her life would be impossible.  One would never be able to bring the right amount of sorrow, irony and strength to the story.  So I will not try to do so here either.  But tonight she is on my mind because of a strange sequence of events on this lazy, unusually warn Sunday afternoon.  In trying to fix a leak in our shower, my husband took apart my makeup vanity and cut a hole in the wall to get to the shower’s plumbing.  Before he took apart the cabinet, I had a chance to clean it out and stack the items on the floor beside our dresser.  There is something motivating about seeing all of your things strewn all over the floor – a pull to purge that I simply couldn’t ignore.  So I began to sort through the containers: old lipsticks, soured perfume’s, a cloth bag of thirty or more beaded bracelets, embroidered handkerchiefs, and an old cigar box full of discarded jewelry – my grandmother’s jewelry that my aunts gave me upon her death.  I guess they assumed the plastic necklaces and metal bracelets were of little value for selling in their antique shop.  I’ve fingered through this box so many times over the past four years that it offers little for surprises or “ah-hahs.”  But tonight I noticed something new or perhaps I’d noticed it before but this time my mind was open to the possibilities.  I noticed three necklaces that could pass for vintage, items that could easily be worn with a modern suit or a whimsical chiffon blouse.  Three necklaces that I could fix with some simple fixes, a little creativity and 60-minutes to myself.  I stole a few rings here and there from necklaces I was throwing away (also in the purge) and repaired the clasp on one of them.  The second simply required a gentle hand and a pair of pliers to bend the fragile metal linking each section back together.  I then went to the basement to pull out my fine jewelry making supplies, which I haven’t touched since child #2 and moving to the new house three years ago.  I had forgotten just how much I had stock-piled – smoky quartz, multiple colors of jade, garnet, turquoise, pearls, etc.  So many projects, so little time.  I hastily glanced at the stones in the zip locked bags, trying to remember what I had in mind for each, but then quickly moved on to what I was searching for – the string and needle for stringing pearls.  For the third necklace, I simply needed to re-string one of the strands of pearls and tie off the ends to the clasp.  While I sat at the dining room table and began to cut the yellowed thread, I began to think about my grandmother.  She had lived on a crop farm and worked full time for the telephone company, so she didn’t spend a lot of time on being fashionable.  She couldn’t afford fancy clothes and she never wore makeup, that I can remember.  But she always wore jewelry when she drove to town and to church.  She mostly wore necklaces, clip-on earrings and pins – lots of pins.  Had she saved this necklace with the hopes of repairing it?  Did she buy it for herself, which is doubtful, or did one of her sisters give it to her as a gift?  Perhaps it had been in a box of junk that my grandfather had purchased at one of the many estate auctions he loved to attend and it held absolutely zero sentiment for my grandmother.  I will never know for sure.  I restrung the pearls and began to tie off the ends.   This is when I noticed that the old strands were double threaded and I had only single threaded the new strand.  Do I re-do it or is the newer thread thicker?  How would I feel if this necklace broke at work and pearls bounced away unretrievably?  I decided to double knot it above and below the connector and call it good.  I cut off the extra thread and sat back to evaluate my handiwork.  Good enough for vintage, I thought.  I’m looking forward to wearing my new necklaces to work this week.  There’s always the fear that they’ll break, but I’ll gamble on it this time. Because my grandmother was poor and I am of the second generation, I didn’t get an inheritance or even anything of substantial value upon her death.  But I got so much more – I got a box of broken jewelry that offered me a few quiet moments of repurposing, rejuvenating, reflecting and remembering.