The Diamond

The vows of a marriage "for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, til death do us part".

As a young girl, all of us in the neighborhood endlessly invented and played games. There was the Miss America game, the teacher game, the run away nun game (as in a motorcycle riding version of The Flying Nun), the huntress game, the spy game (Man from UNCLE), the Cinderella game (aka Disney complete with singing mice), and the getting married game (any surprise I am in games still?).

It seems as if our lives as young girls were geared to saying those vows, and when the great day of the anticipated event arrives, it flies by. The prince and princess take the stage and as in any youthful experience it is the words "for richer...in health", the rainbow and the sunrise, the flow of yet to be discoveries - the honeymoon, purchasing the first home, children and baking cookies, vacations, and yet to be joyful achievements, that are expressed and celebrated.

These dreams are secured with two golden bands, but the initial promise is made with a diamond.

Mom and Dad 1956

In the last years of my mother's life she was overcome with two chronic diseases. Both left her, the wise and loving caregiver, painfully immobile. In turn, it was my Dad who became her caregiver. In the last year of his life, he got pneumonia and then suffered a heart attack. I immediately departed a conference that my students and I were presenting at to be with my family. My siblings and I gathered around, taking turns in caring for both of them. As I sat with my Mom in the evening, she became very distraught. She shared that a few months before she had lost her engagement ring. For my steady as a rock Mom, she was unusually panicked. Her ring symbolized their union - and the two acts, the loss of the ring and my father now hospitalized, compounded her fear of losing him.

Mom had become so thin, a fragile hatchling of her former beauty, that I could envision the ring slipping gently off as she napped.  Knowing her patterns, I began a search and buried deep in the pockets of the couch mechanisms, I found it! If only you could have seen her joy, her radiance, and then the pure sleep it enabled her that evening.

Dad and Mom 2013

Yesterday, after returning home, cooking dinner, taking out garbage, straightening up, feeding dogs, letting them in and out, flipping and folding laundry and then settling in beside Jim on the couch, we were able to chat with my brother Steve by phone. As I sat there, I unconsciously began to play with my rings. But something was immediately wrong. The edge was sharp, there was no bevel, my diamond was gone!

After only dating a month, Jim asked me to marry him thirteen years ago. Looking into his hazel eyes and seeing their depth, knowing I knew him in a profound way (he is his father's son - the other man I once called Dad), I said something to the effect of "You are crazy. Yes!".

Thus began our search for the perfect rings. And then the official ask planned by Jim with the collaboration of my daughter Tegan: a surprise dinner with a fist sized plastic ring, balloons, a cute stuffed dog, the actual diamond, and applause by the surrounding diners.

Our diamond, our joy, our promise.

I was besides myself last night. I searched in the crystalline snow where I had been with the dogs, through the garbage and recycling, around the two sinks where I had done dishes and washed my hands. Jim took apart the two traps. I dissolved into tears holding him tight. I was my mother with the same fears. How could this happen now?

Diamond. Stone of winter's ice, purest carbon, hardest of substances, strength, love, fidelity. It is said to be known since antiquity as the

"Stone of Invincibility" bringing victory, superior strength, fortitude and courage to its wearer. It is associated with lightning and fearlessness, and for its properties of protection. It is a symbol of wealth and manifesting abundance in one’s life, an amplifier of energies, goals and intent, and is highly effective in magnifying the vibrations of other crystals for healing. It is particularly beneficial set in gold and worn on the left arm."

But like the story of five years before, I carefully and thoroughly followed my footsteps, and in unfolding the just folded laundry, it tumbled out onto the floor. Glittering, promising, giving me back hope that has been hard to conjure up.

That has been my gift. In that moment, I felt God's love holding us up, celebrating, promising "for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, til death do us part". We will be fine. We are joyous.

Jim and me 2005