My mother collected bells.
It wasn't intentional, at first. And it was kinda sorta my fault.
I'd given her a glass dinner bell one year, as a Christmas present. And, lacking imagination (and not really being satisfied with the sound of that first bell), gave her a second glass bell after that. Then I found a chrystal bell, which was much nicer. And we kinda sorta thought that was enough.
But then, Mom was looking for something to put on the mantle, as a decoration, and she took the three bells and put them together. And then she had a thought. She added to the three bells a small brass bell that looked like it had some from India, and a cow bell, something we had used when I was younger when one of us was ill as a way of signalling for attention. So that started her collection of bells.
The collection slowly grew, in bits and pieces. She'd find something at a charity event, or while travelling. The year der Brucer and I went to England and Germany, I found three bells to give her - a Wedgewood bell in blue, a small Swarovski bell with a very nice tinkley sound, and a wooden-handled bell from Amsterdam. Mom never got to Europe herself. Those three bells were her way of having been there. Kinda, sorta.
By this time, she and Dad had moved from Burbank to Sonora, where the bells were on display on a large shelf that separated the living room from the stairway to the basement. Also on display were the quilted pieces she had made, and needlepoint, but it was the bells that caught people's attention. And it was bells that people would give her, whether it be as a birthday present or some secret Santa gift. She knew where each and every bell had come from, of course.
After she died, of a cancer that we thought had been taken care of when I was in Junior High but instead had lurked for years in the shadows before returning with renewed viciousness, Dad relocated the collection to a special display case.
It was a shock, therefor, when my sister declared that she wanted the bell from India and the cowbell back. "Those are mine," she told us. No, they became Mom's. They were the seeds of a grand collection. The rest of the collection, my sister had no interest in.
It's been years since I've been to that house in Sonora, separated by long drives and now by an entire continent. It wouldn't surprise me to find the cowbell and the little bell from India gone. But I'm sure the rest of the collection remains where it is, where it should be. My step-mother knew my mother, knew what those bells meant to her. In fact, I think she gave my mother one or two of those bells herself.
