A Short Letter Home: Shattered

Monday, May 21, 2007

Shattered

How do I write this? How can I describe this loss? Is this something I even want to write? After almost eighteen years of marriage, I'm.... well, let's just say it's gone. Shattered. Irreparably broken.

What? My marriage? Oh, no that's fine. Well, as well as can be expected under the circumstances. No, what I'm talking about is my wedding ring. My fifth wedding ring to be exact. You see, back in 1989 we were young, in love and went to some store or another to buy me a wedding ring. I think we went to Service Merchandise, or some such department store. We found a plain, gold wedding band for about $100. I think. My memory is quite unreliable, I'm afraid. I do know that it was gold, however, and I do remember that it was a bit loose. At the time I thought loose was good. I planned on wearing that thing for many years and I figured my fingers would get fatter. Buying for the future, I was.

Well, the future didn't quite worked out the way I planned. Loose meant that the ring had a tendency to slip off. Most of the time I caught it, but there were a few times I didn't. Like the time I was swimming in the hotel pool in St. Louis, and had to dive to the bottom to retrieve it. Or the winter day I was taking out the garbage to the dumpster behind our apartment in Chicago. I had to run up down the stairs with a teapot full of hot water to melt the snow so I could find my band of gold. And then there was the day we were snowshoeing up at Mt. Rainier and I swung my arm a bit too briskly. The ring flew off my hand and landed in the snow. 27 feet of snow. No teapot was going to save the day that time. We filed a lost and found claim with the park rangers, but we also stopped at a store on the way home and bought a replacement ring.

My second ring was silver, with a cross engraved in it. I think I had the idea of some sort of Celtic design in mind, but this was more simple and cheaper. Maybe we spent $50 for it? Anyway, having learned my lesson, I made sure it had a nice snug fit. I was quite happy with the design, but I soon discovered that for some reason it would irritate the skin on my finger, especially if I got my hands wet. So I got into the habit of removing the ring anytime I got my hand wet. It was a dangerous habit, but I only had one close call with losing it in all the years I owned it. (I had been changing a diaper--a definite wet hands situation--and left the ring sitting on a shelf in a public restroom. That ring did make it to the lost and found and I retrieved it the next day.)

But despite many years of hanging onto the ring, I did manage to lose that one as well. One day we were heading to Chicago and as we headed towards airport security I frantically divested myself of anything that might remotely trigger the metal detector. (This was pre 9-11 when passing through security could be quick.) I stuffed all my loose possessions into the exterior pockets of the diaper bag and somewhere in the process the ring must have tumbled out. All I know is that when I recombobulated myself, I was ringless. As penance, I spent the whole vacation ringless. Afterward, however, Yau Neih had pity on me and gave me my third wedding ring. This one was my favorite. She crocheted it herself out of string. I proudly wore it, though still removing it to wash my hands and such. It wore out after many months, but Yau Neih could crochet a new one to replace it.

Of course, that was boring for her, so after about a year of having a string ring, she bought me another silver ring for Christmas. I had been hoping for a CD, but that's not important here. It was a thin band, with the word "love" engraved upon it. I wistfully put my string ring aside and began to wear my fourth ring. This also survived for a while, much like my second. It's loss, however, was quite undramatic. One day, around the beginning of this year, I had slipped it off for some reason or another and had put it in my pocket. Somehow, somewhere it must have slipped out. I sadly confessed my loss. Yau Neih, at this point, took it very well. Obviously my inability to hang onto wedding rings is just one of those irritating, unchangeable habits that spouses learn to deal with.

So anyway, we come to my current ring... well, formerly current, I guess. Back on our Dali trip we were turning the park at Butterfly Spring. We were wandering through a gift shop and saw a bunch of jade thingies on sale, including a little bin of rings. I was taken up with the idea of getting a jade ring and Yau Neih agreed. Especially since the rings were only 10 kuai each. So we bought one--a kind of a brown, green and white mixture. (I'm sure the original stone had beautiful bands of color, but when you cut it down to ring size, you kind of lose the magic.) It fit well and I quite liked it. Though I guess my fingers were kind of fat that day, because in the weeks since I've had moments when the ring would threaten to slip off. Another plus was that it didn't irritate my skin. So I took Yau Neih's suggestion that I take to wearing the ring all of the time. I think her rationale was that if I always wore the ring, I'd be less likely to misplace it. Sound reasoning. But when I followed her advice, I lacked one vital bit of information.

On Sunday night, after tearing myself away from a very addicting book, I headed to the shower. I was washing my hair, scrubbing away, when I felt the ring slip off of my finger. I could feel it bounce off my shoulder and heard a little ding! as it hit the floor. Concerned that it might be swept down the drain, I immediately cut the water and wiped the soapy water from my eyes. There I saw my current wedding ring had been transformed into my current wedding curved fragments. Nobody told me that jade would break if you dropped it from a sufficient height. I sadly gathered up the three pieces and wondered if it would be worth trying to repair.

The next morning I broke (no pun intended) the news to Yau Neih. I also determined that any attempts to superglue the ring together would probably be futile. So now the question is what shall I get for my next ring? There are still many materials that I haven't tried--wood, copper, brass, plastic. I suppose I could just apply a line of super-glue around my ring finger and dip my hand into a pile of glitter. Nah, that would be too gaudy. Ah, well. If anyone has a suggestion, feel free to send it my way. Even if I buy my sixth ring in the meantime, I can file ideas away for the seventh.