The Mystery Accordion

​A few years after my grandmother died, my mom brought out Grandma’s jewelry box while my two sisters and I were visiting.  Mom laid her mother's jewelry out on the dining room table in a river of rhinestones so my sisters and I could take turns choosing what we liked. Sometimes Mom examined a piece before putting it down, smiling slightly as she remembered a particular pin. 
 
I love old-fashioned jewelry, especially rhinestone broaches. I chose many pieces I frequently wear, including a set of autumn-colored rhinestones. I also chose a pair of white mice pins because I remembered Grandma wearing them on her red wool coat. 

After several turns choosing, my sisters and I were down to the odd bits, the little trinkets many of us keep in our jewelry boxes for one reason or another.  We examined them curiously. Among them was a metal medallion painted sky blue, with a raised silver gilt accordion on it.

​I found this medallion so intriguing. How had Grandma come by it? Why did she keep it?  As far as I knew, she had never played the accordion.  Did it symbolize music? Dancing the polka? Had she won it? Had it been a gift from someone, perhaps a student?  Her mother (my great-grandmother) had been a musician.  Had it been hers?  

​Neither of my sisters wanted the accordion medallion, so I took it. I also found, jumbled in the bottom of the jewelry box with sections of broken chain, a gold metal clamp (bail?) that I tightened onto the medallion so that I could use it as a pendant. 
 
Mystery is all around us, even mysteries about those closest to us.  I wonder about the story behind the accordion medallion, but I will never know. Since I’m a writer, maybe someday I’ll make up a story about it.  For now, I wear the mystery accordion occasionally as a pendant strung on a white ribbon. Wearing it reminds me of all the stories I don’t know, and how intriguing they all are.