Pierced Ears and the Pandemic

 

Carolyn J. Rose

As a little girl, I loved to rummage through my grandmother’s jewelry box. To me, it was a pirate’s treasure chest filled with gold and silver and glittering gems. Or, with the accuracy of time and knowledge, it was filled with brooches and clips and bracelets she referred to as costume jewelry. My perception of what “costume” meant was that the jewelry should be used to adorn the costumes I created out of articles scavenged from her closet—scarves and belts and shoes and a coat with a balding mink collar.

 

There were a few other pieces, less glitzy and almost forlorn: lockets missing pictures, a bent bracelet, broken chains, and single earrings kept with the hope a mate might one day reappear. Some of those earrings had clips or tiny blunt-headed screws that tightened against the lobe. Other, however, had posts or wires and were meant to pass through pierced holes.

 

I recall shuddering at the idea of poking something through solid flesh. My grandmother assured me it didn’t hurt and pointed out tiny dark spots on her earlobes. Those, she said, had been holes. But they’d grown closed because she never wore pierced earrings anymore and seldom wore earrings at all.

 

That surprised me more than the idea of going through what I imagined was a painful experience only to let scar tissue take over. Why collect all those sparkly bits and keep them around if you didn’t use them? And why wear pinchy clip-on earrings if there was an alternative?

 

My mother used to say that she knew it was time to leave the party when her earrings started to pinch. It could also have been a sign that another cocktail was required. But I didn’t know that until I reached drinking age.

 

I decided that I’d definitely have my ears pierced. But the project went on the back burner along with my intention to wear makeup (“Not until you’re 16,” my father decreed) and shorter skirts.

 

I didn’t get around to turning on that back burner until I went off to college, 2000+ miles from home. But it wasn’t until my sophomore year that the possibilities for style and statement outweighed the known pain of clip-on earrings and the anticipated pain of piercing. So I went for it and allowed a roommate to hold an ice cube against my earlobe for a minute and then jab a self-piercing earring through as I clenched my fists and entertained about a hundred second thoughts.

 

Kids today, kids who get their ears pierced sometimes long before they head off to kindergarten, won’t get this. Kids who sport tattoos and lip rings and piercings in places I don’t want to think about, won’t understand what a big deal it was.

 

I heard a sharp pop as the point passed through the cartilage and then, except for swabbing on alcohol and turning the earrings regularly, it was done. Well, done except for worrying about infection and soothing those worries by gazing at the trove of earrings waiting to swing from the holes. I’d bought perhaps a dozen—tiny bananas being my favorites at the time.

 

In the 50 years since then I’ve owned about 200 sets of earrings—studs and dangles, gold and silver, feathers and stones, and in all colors. I’ve had tiny dragons and cats, birds and bells, spiders and webs, and once a set made from IUDs. (Don’t ask me what I was thinking because I have no idea.) I wore earrings every day.

 

When the pandemic came and we shut ourselves in, the earrings came out of my ears. Before I realized it, the holes in my lobes were growing shut. For a time I considered just going with it. Then a friend sent me a new pair, studs bearing tiny photographs of bags of Cheetos.

 

You all know how much I love Cheetos.

 

Obviously, those pierced holes have to stay.