This is my most-worn piece of jewelry after my wedding ring, which makes it one of My Favorite Things. I call it the Tek Bracelet.
"Tek" is short for Tekla, and Tekla was Tekla Allen, a family friend since I was a child. She was always called Tek for as long as I knew her, which I found strange as a child, though I found the fact that it was a nickname for "Tekla" even stranger. Tekla was one of those names like Opal and Edna and Ethel that children of the 1970s would encounter only on grandmothers and great aunts.
Tek is from the small town where I grew up, and she was an amazing woman. She married well, to a local pharmacist who also owned his drugstore which, incredibly, still had an operating lunch counter through the early 1980s. (I assure you it was quaint even back then.) They had a nice 1950s-era ranch home filled with original mid-century modern furnishings. Antiques at that time still trended toward the Victorian and the Depression eras. The nice Danish modern stuff Tek had was considered too recent and unfashionable in the late 1970s when she became a widow and sold the house and much of its furnishings to move into a senior apartment complex. I'm sure a lot of it went for a steal and oh, how people including my parents would pay through the nose for that stuff today!
I met Tek when she was still incredibly spry for a woman in her 60s--one whose mother was still alive, living independently in her late 80s and almost equally spry. Tek still dressed to the nines, wearing little heels and stockings, with scores of handbags and incredible jewelry. Lots of chunky bracelets, big bead strands and pendants and fancy clip-on earrings. I saw pictures of Tek from the 1950s, doing upper-middle-class housewife-ly things like shopping downtown and attending charity social events. She was always wearing fox pieces, little hats and white gloves. Style was important to her and seemed to come naturally to her.
She gave birth to one son who was also a friend of my parents (and much closer to their age), which is how we all met Tek. The son died young--at just 42--of MS, but Tek was such a neat lady that her daughter-in-law would continue to take care of her for the rest of her life, even though they were no longer related and even after she had married a second husband. Tek moved to live near them when she got older and eventually moved in with them when she was in her 80s.
By chance, her death happened just a few days before I had planned a visit home. I lived hours away by that time and I don't know if I would have driven home to attend the funeral, but I was happy it worked out that I could attend. My mom was helping the ex-daughter-in-law clear out some of Tek's things after her death, and the woman sent home with her a big bag of costume jewelry from one of Tek's many jewelry boxes.
We each picked a few pieces and wore them to Tek's funeral the next day, to honor her. The Tek Bracelet is one of the pieces I chose.
I wore it (and still wear it) often and it always brings complements. It goes with any outfit and adds a touch of class to even t-shirts and jeans. The bracelet is not a precious metal and appears to be stainless steel. It has no brand markings on it but is probably something like Sarah Coventry or Avon or something that would have been sold at the local department store. It has a spring hinge and is actually a little snug on me since I gained weight, though it still fits. It would probably fit as an armband on a skinny-armed person. I like the design so much I considered getting an armband tattoo of it at one point.
My mom saw how often I wore it and when she later found a yellow gold-toned equivalent at a garage sale, she bought it for me.
I like and wear both pieces, though I don't wear yellow gold jewelry very often. And of course, the yellow gold-toned bracelet is not the Tek Bracelet, so it's less special.
