RINGS


My ring glints in the water as I swim slowly to shore. It’s just under the surface, but is still brilliant in the sunlight. I lift it out to take a look: It blinks and twinkles. It’s not a big ring, – five small diamonds set in a row. But it is a powerful ring. A ring that tells of promises made and kept, of children born and grown, of years sweeping by one after the other –  thirty-eight years to be exact.A lot to hold in one little ring.

I’m not wearing my wedding ring these days, just the engagement ring. I took off two of my rings, one to have made larger, and the other because I felt two was too many. But I missed my sparkly diamonds, soI switched my wedding ring for my engagement ring. The ring that once, years ago, I looked at and saw that one of the diamonds was cracked . . . clean through. We left it that way for a while and then, when we could afford it, we had it replaced. I never thought diamonds broke, but now I know they do.

I almost wish I’d left it cracked just to show my students. They always ask me if I’m married once they notice my rings.  When I say yes, they ask me about my husband.  I tell them that they would like him, that he’s nice to everyone, especially kids, that you can trust him, and that he makes me laugh. They like that. They nod and narrow their eyes a bit, taking in the description, and then we move on.

It breaks my heart to think that many of my students don’t have a father to make them laugh, to protect them from bad stuff, or to just watch a TV show with. I try to imagine what that would be like, but I can’t.

One of the happiest things about my marriage these days is that I can watch my husband as he helps both the people I love most, and the people I have just met: Kids who think no one much cares about them.Parents who have almost given up hope. As author St. Exupery wrote so beautifully, a good marriage looks outward, uses its strength to try and help those in need, provides security and renewal so that both partners can go back out there, and keep giving.

Like any good, strong relationship a good marriage centers on a few basics: respect, forgiveness, and purpose. I’m struck by the fact that I didn’t put love down, but I know why. I believe the emotion we call love comes from the other three. It is an effect, not a cause. Throughout my life, I have grown to love people because of their character; because of their compassion, or intelligence, or joy. Fortunately, those are the things that stick. As the rings get tight, or the hair goes white, the things that last, well, last.

I have always loved this quote: “You should want to marry someone who will challenge the vices you have come to love, and affirm the gifts you are afraid to claim. Such relationships are a school where we learn what it means to love God as God has first loved us. “ (L.Gregory Jones). It speaks to me of the hard passages of every marriage, as well as the transcendent ones.

The ring I had to get enlarged because I had outgrown it was originally my grandmothers. It is a beautiful, simple ring. Every time  I put it on I think of her, of how cherished mementos of a life get passed down to the next generation; of how much her husband, my grandfather, must have loved her. Not because he gave her jewelry, but because they shared a life together. A life that blessed many others, myself included. And I think how glad she would have been to know I married a man who can make children laugh and feel happy and loved, without even trying.

So much better than diamonds.


Antoine de St. Exupery:

“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”

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