The Ring

It’s almost 35 years old. I am almost 33. I doubt I have seen a smidgen of what it has. It’s gold and hard but sparkly and delicate. One must wonder how some of the hardest materials found on this earth, metal and diamonds, could be made into things that are almost exclusively delicate and feminine. A less fierce feminist than myself might wonder is what I should say. I don’t imagine there is anything coincidental or ironic about it. Its strength is its beauty and also its value, and all three are a byproducts of all that it takes to create it. After billions of years, over 100 miles, thousands of pounds of pressure and so many lost lives and families…we get this shiny stone. Perhaps the process and sacrifice of so much is what birthed the association with forever. Perhaps the mere strength of the stone being nearly impervious to destruction is a better reason. Maybe it’s none of the above but the value aside from this context seems arbitrary.

This ring represents the union of two people whom I never knew. A man and woman who met. years after life had happened to each of them in huge and traumatic ways. I imagine they were a tornado together that sucked up and spit out good and bad. He courted her fiercely and she resisted him coyly. He vied to possess her inside and out and she longed to be owned. neither of them was the only one yet each of them fought, gladiators, to the death for one another. he chose the ring because it reminded him of her. It was golden and shiny. thin and fragile but strong at the same time. The setting is flower shaped but the stone is round. It sits high and catches the sun from all angles. It reflects not only beauty around it but takes in the ugliness and throws it out as bright rays, less ugly than before. What does it know?

For this couple, whom life had happened to, this union was all there was. There was this family and this bond and love was there but wasn’t the most important thing. I wasn’t there but I want to believe it was a memorable moment. He got down on one knee and told her all of the reasons it was her and could never be anyone else. That no one else existed in his world but her and that she was all he would ever need. She believed him of course and together they changed large cross sections of this world. Their first child was a son. He was a big healthy boy with huge green eyes and a head full of black curls. He could float away with those dark, airy, bubbles on his head, piled all over. She loved him bottomlessly and he was bubble gum on her shoe from the moment he could walk. He had his Father’s full lips and his Mother’s long lashes. He had his Father’s vicious fight and his Mother’s huge heart and playful spirit. The ring brushed against his curls and felt his forehead when he was feverish and pressed tightly against his small fingers, holding his hand when crossing the street.

Next was another son. He was a much smaller and less healthy one but brilliant. He didn’t have the strong legs and chest the first one had. He was frail and she worried for him endlessly. Ring on her left hand, she held him close to her chest and hummed and rocked him to sleep. She rubbed his tiny back and let him hold her finger as he nursed. She lifted him up when he was too tired to walk anymore and the ring cupped him right under his diaper. He would tuck his head into her neck and smell her to feel safe.

The Mother and Father actually never married so the ring was an unkept promise. He wasn’t well and often mistreated her. Maybe if he had worn a ring as well, his hands would have been more helpful. He let her take the brunt of all of his sickness. He abused her body and held her with no air. She would look at her ring and there no longer was a smile but only a heavy weight in her left hand that hung on her left side causing her heart to sink. She would disappear behind a door to weep and the ring would be covered with tears and sweat and blood. The stone would be clouded with years of salty tears and trace amounts of plasma. There was no longer a sparkle and her left ring finger started to swell and choke. She would wake many mornings and look at her sons and look at herself and look at her ring and only sadness would come.

One day, she looked at her ring and thought about what it might be like to take it off. It was a lie after all. She wasn’t the only one in his world. She wasn’t even this favorite one. If she was she didn’t want to be. She tried for days and weeks and months to get that ring off and somehow it was a part of her. it was an appendage that she would not easily sever. He was gone and still the ring held tightly to her flesh as a parasite. She would pull and tug and yank and it wouldn’t budge. It would cut her and since the ring was no stranger to pain it would just rest there calmly, unyielding. Then the news came. He was dead. She knew he was dying, but not sure of what so there was not much to consider. He was a man of many weaknesses but not to his knowledge and he chose to die alone. Perhaps he felt he deserved a solitary death. She touched the ring with her thumb and two first fingers, and with a deep inhale, slipped it right off. She looked at her hand and the indentation there. There were at least three shades difference where the ring was. It was an absence of color and light right there before her very eyes.

She kept the ring in a safe place until she realized that her first born was becoming a man. He was becoming a man not at all like his Father and would someday make a woman so happy so she gave it to him. She told her son that when he met the woman he intended to marry and that he wanted to bear children with and create good memories with, that he must give her this ring. She told him that it was still the most valuable thing that existed amongst them and that it had been apart of her for so long that she wanted him to take very good care of it but that her time with it had ended. He did as she asked and here it sits.