Precious? Well I kept it 35 years.

So it's Sian's Story Telling Sunday again, you can join in over yonder! at High in the Sky!

This year Sian has asked us to story tell our precious items, and today she herself has chosen a postcard she received aged 10 years old, not depicting a momentous event today, but most precious at the time and obviously something she has never felt she wanted to be without.  I have something similar. I don't feel hugely strongly about it, but it is a small reminder and there doesn't seem any reason to not leave it in the little jewelry box with the charm bracelet from being a bridesmaid age 6 and my first signet ring.

As you may imagine there is a back story or two!

I was christened Kathryn and pretty much always called that by family and friends until I was a teen.  One of my first boyfriends, a lad from Mousehole had a Mum who's sister was called Kathy. She was a fab lady from Leicester and although she suffered with horrendous arthritis, to the extent that she could ride a bike more readily than walking, a\nd as a 15 year old I really loved her.. she called me Kathy and my Mum became 'Kathy's mum' to him and history was written. 

Now this is the bit I cringe about... I must have been a pretty pretentious teen in my own way (though on looking back I am sure I was pretty square.. but weren't we all in 1975 compared to pretentious of the 21st century?) because I kind of didn't like 'Kathy', especially 'Kathy Thomas', not sure why, it just didn't run off the pen, so I must have tried it out a few times and with the flourish of a teenager who was fairly academic (and in those days that meant being a pretty good essay writer as much as being a smart-ass!) I finally decided that it I was going to be stuck with Kathy, then I would make it a bit different and Kathi was born!  It ran off the pen nicely when I signed it and I liked how it looked on cards and stuff.

What I didn't expect was how stupid it looked when written by friends with tidy oval handwriting and the people who still practiced that joined up stuff we learnt for the 11+

Even today I use it still but have people apologising for spelling it wrong when they have sent me an email. When people ask if I am Kathi with  K or a C I take a breath, sigh and say whichever, then agree it is a K... then send one back and they must wonder.. why didn't she say it ends in 'i' but no 'e'... and if they do I just say, oh well I must have been a pretentious teenager.. and hope they smile too!

So, then there's KathiJo.. I know it sounds like a gingham-skirted-cookie-baking-southern-mom from Texas or somewhere, but it's actually just the first name hotmail would accept that didn't require a load of numbers too... and so Kathryn became Kathi became Kathi Jones who finally became KathiJo your blogger pal!

... and you may wonder, what precious item prompted this explanation?

(which in the true reason for my blogging, will one day explain in my usual protracted way,  to my nearest and dearest should they be ever wondering when I have long forgotten..why I was called Kathi..)... this necklace a(nother) boyfriend had made especially for me in about 1977. 

I think he had worries about how I actually spelt it.. but at least I knew it was made just for me because how many others were about just then!   Every now and then I find this in the little box and tell the story of how we had a whirlwind romance during my second year of A levels, prompted by his Dad (on holiday in Mousehole) suggesting he send him to take me out! He arrived in his Dad's car, took me to eat somewhere proper and even got out to open the car door for me.. well, we just weren't used to it in these parts were we.

Sadly a year on we had done it all, planned our lives, got engaged, he moved from London to live here, his family were moving here too anyways... and then the rot set in.. life was real, I was way too young, he liked his beer way too much and I got three good 'A' levels and realised that there was more to life than being a wife waiting at home until the pub called last orders! 

My darling Mum never judged for a moment, sat by, quietly not saying much at all, supporting during the high days and the low days, I bet she lay awake a good deal at night wondering just what would happen... but I made my own choices, eventually the right ones and it was over. She didn't say I told you so because she hadn't, but I knew she had thought so..... and about three years later the same guy was lost on the Penlee Lifeboat in 1981.. it was a strange thought, I saw his Mum and she said she was glad we hadn't worked out as I would have been a widow that day and probably had lost a father to my children. 

Truthfully the whole disaster was such a sad time for the village, I didn't feel worse about him than any of the others I knew and my step-father probably felt worst of all because he lived with and saw raised several of those guys in 1960's Mousehole.... but maybe there is a little more to the story of the necklace than I realise and maybe why I kept it longer than I may otherwise have done....a kind of a symbol of the innocence of a young romance in days when no-one can have predicted what would happen in the future... and now that little bit of story has been told..

Funny too, as I feel sadder writing about this now than ever before..xx