Bands of Gold (or Since You've Been Gone)

I sold my wedding rings yesterday for $360.00. In the midst of my losing my day job, which really is a good thing, and trying to restructure my life and how I see money, and well, just about everything else, it seemed like the right thing to do. And it was. I just didn’t realize how much those rings symbolized to me, and once they were gone, all that they meant surfaced, and it made sense why I’d held on to them for so long. 

I was barely nineteen years old when Steve drove me to Southdale, and once we’d gone inside the mall, told me to close my eyes as he held my hand and took me into J. B. Hudson Jewelers. Once I was in front of the diamond engagement rings, he told me to open my eyes. He could be very sweet and fun and romantic like that. We picked out a beautiful third of a carat ring, that along with the wedding ring, studded with emeralds, looked like a flower with a small second diamond bloom. 

Picking out a ring from one of the best jewelers in town meant that I was cared for, valued, cherished. Steve’s mom asked why I couldn’t just get a ring from Goodman’s, the other jewelry store at the mall, but most people just agreed that it was a beautiful ring. This ring meant that our love was legit, that Steve wasn’t just ‘using’ me, he loved me and wanted to marry me. And for many many years, these rings were the most precious things I’d ever had, monetarily and symbolically. The ring meant I was a ‘good’ girl, found, not lost. 

There were four rings in all that I sold, the engagement and the wedding rings, which were soldered together, a third, plain gold band that I asked Steve to buy me when Kathleen was a baby, and the tall setting on my ring nearly scratched her. I decided it was time to retire the beautiful set, at least for a while, for this plain gold band. It too, represented that Steve would listen to me, would value me and see that as much as the other rings were beautiful, sometimes it was time to be pragmatic, sensible. I was a plain band, but modern, with square, not rounded edges. 

Then, there was my grandmother’s dented, plain gold band. This was the ring my mom gave to me while she has still kept the three diamond and platinum rings that had belonged to my great aunts. I took it for sentiment, my mother’s mom was never wealthy, like my Dad’s aunts. She was usually dressed in cotton dresses with a cotton apron, and wore this dented ring while she cooked, and canned and cleaned. She is most remembered in our family for the way she would swear at my Grandpa, “Dammit Andy” she’d say, often enough that us kids would mimic her well into our adult years. 

Now they are all gone gone gone. None of my daughters wanted my rings, they thought the rings I wore were jinxed, bad juju, since my marriage lasted 15 years, not forever. But I know now that nothing lasts forever. Nothing. And I don’t want to turn into my mom, hoarding diamonds and platinum and constantly worrying about not having enough money. I’m trying to undo the worrying that I do do. I am changing my life yet again, and this isn’t just the outward stuff, it’s the inward beliefs. I was brought up that my beliefs were something that should be constant, something you know, to believe in. But my beliefs are not constant, they are constantly changing. Shifting like the sands, rolling like the ocean. 

As beautiful and meaningful as ritual can be, it can also tie us to beliefs about ourselves and others that can never be true. As beautiful as sparkly rings with diamonds can be, (especially under the lights in a jewelry case), they are no guarantee of the purity of our love, or our value, or of the longevity of our relationships. Once the rings were appraised, I could see that the jeweler was excited about the beauty of the diamond, which I knew he would resell for much more than $300.00. I felt sad, but also relieved. That is the nature of sentimental value. When we buy expensive items that we don’t really need, they are representative, that’s what the value is. Once they are bought, the value recedes into nothingness. 

On the way home, I voiced my worries to Megan. My left hand felt strange, even though I hadn't worn the rings in years, my ring finger felt light, empty. Maybe I should have saved the rings for Audrey, my granddaughter, and Megan assured me that Audrey has and would always have everything she needed and wanted. Another belief, that people should pass down precious things, unfurled from my head and blew out the window. What can I pass down to my children, my grandchildren? That we are valuable, that we are precious, that time is fleeting, that there is nothing, nothing, nothing, that is more valuable than each single breath that we take, and the common air that we breath, and knowing, beyond a doubt, beyond any trinket, that we are loved and cared for. 

A Short Side Story

Band of Gold

Ok, remember that song, Band of Gold? In 1970, Freda Payne sang this hit, I was 11 years old and we’d have the transistor radio blaring while we swam in my friend Kelli’s pool. Her dad was a contractor and they had an actual, in ground pool in their backyard, just down the block. It was heaven. We’d put on our suits, grab a towel, walk halfway down the block and be in her pool with half the kids in the neighborhood. Kelli’s mom was also the most beautiful, coolest mom on the block. 

The song, however, with it’s upbeat tone had disturbing lyrics for me. She sang, “All that’s left is a band of gold. . . .” I was so obsessed with love, and scared of it too. Even the movie, Rosemary’s Baby (1968), stuck with me, scared me, worried me about how someone you love could just turn on you, leave you even, or worse, be the devil. I worried as a young girl, how could you know? 

That vulnerability still is the legacy of being a girl or a woman. How could I have known about patriarchy, hierarchy, misogyny? Those are really big words for a 10 or 11 year old, and they weren't on the vocabulary list for me to look up. How could I have known that wedding rings could possibly be bands that bound many women to a submissive role in an unfair agreement? How could I have known then, that what we believe about ourselves and our world, is the most likely to come true? 

How could I have known, that when I worried about being married at all, I should have listened to that, listened to myself? I was taught not to listen to myself, but to listen to my mom, my dad, my priests, the nuns, my teachers, everyone else, but myself. I'm learning to listen to myself. I'm letting all the other words fly out of my head, out of the window. I am making room to believe in myself.