This is Sad

Something disturbing happened yesterday. (No, not the election in West Virginia. Puleeze).

We were eating dinner last night, a lovely little repast of crab cakes and tomato salad, when all a sudden I noticed that the ruby in my wedding ring was gone. G.O.N.E. I know it had happened within hours, possibly minutes of my noticing but there is no possible way we'll find it. (I know only that it didn't fall into the crab cakes. Someone would have noticed that). The Spouse, Lord love him, was down on his hands and knees looking for it around my desk but, like I said, there is no way we'll find it. Most likely it is down a drain, well on its way to the Pacific by now.

It's sad, though. "We've had that ruby for 17 years," said The Spouse. We, you notice. It was as much his ring as mine.

When we got engaged there wasn't a lot of money between us. I told him I didn't need an engagement ring but he wouldn't hear of it. (The proposal had been very spontaneous, so the ring came later). We went to The Shane Company, because we believed their ads about being all affordable and customer service oriented and all that. I wanted a ruby, not a diamond. The Spouse told the salesman how much money we had, what we wanted and the guy proceeded to show us the crappiest, ugliest rubies you ever saw. Not to mention, the rubies weren't yet in settings. He basically showed us our budget in crappy stones, expecting to up sell us. We left. Depressed.

So we went to Nordstrom and bought The Spouse some workboots.

Then The Spouse spied Ben Bridge, a local institution, and suggested we go in there. I suggested we not...if we couldn't get a ring at (what I'd now come to think of as) Hairy Al's House of Low Rent Jewelry, we sure weren't going to be successful at Ben Bridge. But he figured nothing ventured, etc. etc. We went in. A lovely woman asked if she could help us and The Spouse said he wanted to look at rubies. She pulled out a tray of very sweet and perfect little rings and excused herself to help another customer. We looked through the tray and I knew almost immediately which one I wanted. It was like a little vine, a small ruby on a very thin band of gold that wrapped around the finger and ended with a small leaf that nestled the ruby. Inside the leaf was a teeny tiny diamond. It was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen.

Lovely Woman returned to see how we were doing. The Spouse indicated that we'd found something and then asked her "how much". She told us. We looked in shock at each other. "Oh," she said, and not at all patronizingly, "Is that too much? I have other things I can show you".

"No," said The Spouse, "That's perfect. We'll take it". My ring was less than just one crappy, unset ruby at Hairy Al's. The Spouse triumphantly paid cash on the barrel head and sweetly presented me with my ring.

By the time we got married, there was a little more money in the coffers so it was back to Lovely Woman at Ben Bridge. I wanted a larger wedding band and Lovely Woman basically designed my ring. They'd just got in a new shipment of diamonds and she suggested that the engagement ring be welded (is that what they do with gold) to the top of a larger band, with a diamond set on the other side of the ruby from the little leaf. It looks, to my mind, like a teeny posy of flowers. And the band is substantial. When The Spouse first put it on my finger at our wedding, my whole hand felt the weight of it. Talk about your symbols.

We both loved my ring. I would wave it at him and say "glint, glint, glint". It was truly "our" ring because he hadn't wanted a wedding band. Of course, within a few months of marriage he'd changed his mind about that, so for our first wedded Valentine's Day I gave him a band.

Cute story about that: at the coffee hour after church the next Sunday, we took it up to our priest and asked him to bless it. Father R, never one to do things by halves, pulled over 2 of our friends (later to be The Child's godparents), prayed over the ring, then had me put it on The Spouse with all the words from the wedding ceremony, followed by another marriage blessing for the two of us. It was pretty cool.

Anysparkle, after that we could both say "glint, glint, glint" and then we'd gently knock the rings together, rather like toasting with champagne flutes.

Point is, we were both a little sick and sad last night that our ruby has disappeared. I blame myself. Just the other day I was looking at my ring (I still look at it a lot, because it's so pretty) and noticed that it was really time to get the tips redone. The prongs that hold the stones wear down over time and have to be shored back up every so often. Because if you don't, well, the stones can fall out.

I really feel like an idiot today. I can honestly say that I have never taken this ring for granted. I love it. I think about its story and its meaning all the time. So losing the ruby feels a little like a kick in the gut.

I also feel like a chubby idiot because I can't get my ring off my finger. Seriously. I've soaped it up and that sucker isn't getting anywhere past my knuckle. Except it has to come off because a) the ruby needs to be replaced and 2) sleeping with a ring that is nothing but prongs is, uh, dangerous. Can they cut off wedding rings?

I'll find out. The Child has a dentist's appointment today not far from Ben Bridge. So while she's getting things drilled, I'll go in (Lovely Lady is retired, but they are all very nice there) and tell my tale of woe and see what can be done.

Sigh.