There is a little bag somewhere in a safe with my name on it.

Growing up, my dad would give my sister Katie and me jewelry for the big holidays. Little charms, dainty pendants, sweet things. We were kids, and I'll confess: we occasionally tried to negotiate a cash exchange instead. He took the bait every time. And then, quietly, he just tucked the pieces away in small bags labeled with our names, saving them for the day we might actually want them. It's one of my favorite things I know about him.

Maw Maw had her own gifting traditions. Little tokens that accumulated over the years into something that felt, eventually, like a small autobiography of childhood.

I didn't think much about what any of this meant at the time. I do now.

When my children came into the world, one of many things shifted in me. I found myself thinking about the long line I was part of. All the people who had loved and passed things forward, and I wanted to choose something that would mark this moment. My daughter was born in May, so I went looking for something with her birthstone. What I found, I couldn't have imagined.

It's an Art Deco emerald and diamond ring, extraordinary in its own right. But it was the maker's mark that truly captured my heart: Walton & Co.  A jeweler, from the turn of the last century, bearing our very same name.

For my son, I've chosen my beloved "W" brooch: Edwardian, diamond and ruby, ruby being his birthstone. I wear it on blazers and coats and love it every time. I think he will too, someday. He'll make it his own.

My children will not be the jewelry's first owners. Nor, I hope, their last. Because this is what we do. We find these pieces. We steward them. We help you choose the ones worth keeping, the ones that gather our stories alongside the ones they already hold.

With love,
Julie