Harei at mekudeshet li b’taba’at zo k’dat Moshe v’Yisrael.
“Behold, you are consecrated to me with this ring according to the law of Moses and Israel.”
Sometimes, not often, bad behavior is rewarded with sweet forgiveness. This is my story of a lost ring, a lie — and one such sweet reward.
After his mother died, Handsome Hubby gifted me with her beautiful engagement ring.
This was an embarrassment of riches. I already had a stunner of an engagement ring. In fact, I was blessed with two!
My first “engagement” ring (Ring #1) came from my father when I was 12. Big Julie, as my father was known, had hit it big one night at the craps table. And when gamblers win (which happens on rare occasions), they rush to buy jewelry at conveniently located casino jewelry shops, to shed their cash winnings before they’re tempted to gamble again and continue their “lucky streak.”
Flush with his gambler’s glory, my father returned to our Las Vegas home and presented a shiny engagement ring to my mother, who was staring at a stack of unpaid bills.
“Why an engagement ring?” she queried. “I’ve already got a ring. Please take this one to a pawnbroker. We need the money.”
“It’s beautiful,” my father protested. “Wear it on your other hand. I’m not selling it. Give it to Karen. She doesn’t have a diamond ring.”
“Give it to our 12-year-old daughter?” she asked incredulously. “I don’t think so.”
Back and forth the debate went with much pointing to the bills on the kitchen table.
Finally, my mother agreed to put the ring in a safe deposit box, with the promise to give it to my future fiancé. And that is what she did 20 years later, when she handed it to my spouse-to-be — for him to hand to me.
Years later, when my mother died, I, as the only daughter, received her beautiful engagement ring (Ring #2), the one my father had bought her decades before. My husband, Jon, joked that our kids were set. With two diamond rings in the family, no engagement — or inheritance — battles loomed.
As for my husband’s mother’s ring (Ring #3), it had a sad history. A friend of the family, a janitor, found it in a Reno hotel trash can. Short on cash, he asked Jon’s parents if they wanted to buy it. It was a stunning piece. Still, what anger or heartbreak led someone to throw it away?
When my husband’s mother passed, Jon gave me the ring she wore with pride for so many years.
Like my mother, I pointed out I already had an engagement ring (two, in fact).
Like my father, my husband suggested I could wear them on alternate hands, on multiple fingers, on alternating days!
Ironically, I’m not a big fan of diamonds. They’re cold-looking, like ice. They’re expensive. Wear them, and you worry someone will bop you on the head and grab them. Plus, there’s the worry somebody will break in your house and steal them.
It’s that last fear that gets to my lie.
Fear of break-ins prompted me to get a safe deposit box and take out one ring at a time for special occasions.
If the occasion fell on a Saturday night, I would hide the ring “somewhere” in the house until I could get to the bank on Monday.
One time, I hid Jon’s mother’s ring and couldn’t remember where. I searched all my usual hiding places — and all my un-usual hiding places. I tore my closet apart. I tore cabinets apart. And I tore my hair apart.
I searched for four years, but I still haven’t found that ring.
But that’s not the worst of it.
I lied — for the first and only time — to my husband.
Jon specifically asked me to wear his mother’s ring to a special family party. The night of the big event, when I wasn’t wearing it, I told him I hadn’t had time to go to the bank to get it.
For four years, this inner ring drama rang in my head. Finally, I couldn’t stand it. I confessed, but like the coward I was, I blurted out the truth as he was heading out the door to a meeting. He paused, took in the information — and the lie — and left without saying a word.
The hours passed.
He was gone longer than I anticipated. I called. No answer. I left a message. I texted. I worried. I called again. He answered.
“Are you mad at me?”
“I’m in the car. In traffic. I’ll be home in 20 minutes. Let’s talk when I get in.”
I was nervous.
I met him at the door. He smiled. Put his briefcase down and put his arms around me.
“You worried for four years about a lost piece of carbon? We have weathered much bigger storms, suffered much bigger losses. I’m sorry you were so worried. You should have just told me.”
And then he kissed me.
Luckily, joyously, our vows, our consecration to one another, have held up even without that ring.
Footnote: Three years later — a total of seven years after misplacing the ring — it turned up in a moving box. Honest packers placed the ring into a crate, and Karen found it when she opened a box at her new home. Jon took it to the safe deposit box.
