the way things should be

I was at the home of my closest friend, taking a shower in her old bathroom at the back of the house. While showering, I looked out the window, watching the goings on of various people in the backyard. I felt the line of my body, aware that time was passing. After, I walked through the house and saw two small pictures, cut out of magazines and stuck up on the corner of an old sideboard in the kitchen. One picture was of her husband and the other was of a man I admired, twenty years ago, in the years that my friend and I lived together. I realised that she had kept the pictures all these years.
Later, we had been to a formal event for which we had all dressed in our best clothes. The women had all donned beautiful dresses and elaborate jewels. I was now putting my clothes and necklaces away, smoothing the folds of fabric and untangling strings of beads. I came across a necklace and one matching earring that had been made from some of my most treasured jewellery; two necklaces, one consisting of several strands of black crystals, the other several strings of pink crystals, had been unthreaded then rethreaded so that it was now one necklace with both black and pink crystals. In the same way, two earrings, one adorned with black crystals, the other with pink, had been dismantled and restructured to make one earring, heavy with both black and pink crystals. I was dismayed as I didn't like the new jewellery. Where before the pieces were elegant and spare, they were now garish and overstated. My mother was in the same room, putting away her formal attire. I asked her who had done this. She suggested that it may have been one of my friends who had also gone to the ball, but I couldn't think of who. Then we realised that it had been my mother's dear friend, who, we recollected, had worn the jewellery and a matching pink dress. I was offended that she would take something beautiful and precious of mine and, without my permission, rework it to suit her needs, to fit her idea of how things should be. I determined to ask her to undo her work, to restore the pieces to their original form.