I love sparkly things. These are my new favorite earrings: nice and subtle, don’t you think?
I really want to be that person with the cool minimalist bars on her earlobes, or the thin pale gold rings glinting against my hemp skirt– earthy yet chic.
But in my gauche heart I am a newly minted baroness going to a ball. Give me a satin ballgown and ALL the sparkles! Too much is just enough!
I’d always loved diamonds especially– the authority of them, the sharp gleam.
But they were far out of reach, like so many of the things I coveted: a Balenciaga motorcycle bag, a vintage Saab, a small estate with a tasteful castle.
Still I loved them in my craven, frivolous, yearning heart.
To my weepy shock, I inherited my first diamond ring when my beloved grandmother Mimi died. She’d worn that ring on her elegant gnarled fingers as long as I could remember: ten small diamonds in a simple setting that I thought of as art deco even though it was likely purchased in the sixties. Mimi lived in a tiny town in Kentucky, but did not let this stop her from filling her life with graciousness and elegance.
That ring was a powerful talisman, imbued with her grit and her laughter and her sense of inimitable style.
The second ring I bought for myself when I was a single mom living in Portland. It had become utterly clear to me that I was never going to have a partner or spouse– I could see the future, you see, and it was just going to be me and my little girl. That was okay! I liked my life! But I still craved an extravagant sparkle on my finger. I even wrote a whole missive back then about how I felt conflicted about wanting what was essentially an engagement ring but finally decided,
“I am buying myself a ring as a reminder that I don’t need to wait for someone to bring me what I want. I can create it myself. “
So I saved and saved and saved until I could buy the perfect emerald-cut vintage ring. I called it my EFBA ring, short for epic fucking badass, and I felt complete when I’d bought it, as if I’d just become engaged to myself.
(Then mere months later I fell in love with the love of my life and it doubled as my engagement ring, but that’s another story.)
These rings mean something to me.
So I could not believe what happened last week.
For context: I am no longer a scrappy solo mom, I am now a beleaguered country matriarch out of a Louisa May Alcott novel, clucking over my household of seven people plus chickens and a dog and quail and a garden, and sometimes, friends, it feels like our whole life is getting taken over by stupid old sports.
Last week included 3 days of heart-stopping aerial silks performances, an icy-wet rowing regatta, baseball, soccer, and swimming.
Let me be honest: I do not love the sports.
I do try to be a good sport about the sports.
(And much to my own shock, I am highly enjoying my weekly middle-aged-mom soccer nights. I huff and puff and we cackle and afterward we sit and talk and sometimes we drink a cold can of beer on the field or the bleachers just like errant high school students. This is extra fun for me because I was such a virtuous high schooler; I never drank! I never snuck out to the bleachers! It feels like I’m in an 80s movie!)
But one day, after a morning that included BOTH soccer and baseball games, the kids were begging to play a little more baseball. We are already on the field! It was so green and huge! Why not?
Nick joyfully set them up with baseball gloves, they took turns batting, and I reached deep within my tired mama soul to see if I could be a good sport a little bit longer.
I thought maybe I could.
(Plus I hadn’t brought a book.)
I sighed a little resigned sigh and took this smug selfie: mom of the year!
Then I tucked my rings into my pocket for safekeeping, tied my hair into a knot, and jogged out to the outfield in my coat and leather oxford shoes, even though a) I didn’t have a baseball glove and could never catch a pop fly with bare hands, and b) I actually couldn’t catch one with a glove either. But there I went– such a good sport! Pitching in! Playing games with my kids!
Later, we were at the farm store picking up chicken feed and I was looking at their plant selection, dreaming summer dreams of green beans and kale, basil and zucchini. Suddenly I noticed a little glimmer on the ground next to my shoe–
a silver ring.
MY silver ring.
It was one of the two silver rings I wear as wedding bands next to my EFBA ring. They mark the two vows I made when I married Nick: one to him as my spouse, and one to our kids to be the best possible mom I could be.
The world swam.
I stuck my hand in my pocket to find my other rings (that’s right, I took them off to play baseball) but my pocket was empty. My finger felt air.
I had put those diamond rings– far and away the most valuable thing I own– in my jeans pocket.
Which has a big hole.
I paced the parking lot frantically, hoping they had all fallen out right there, but no. Nick came out of the store, helped me look, and we got back in the car to drive back to the sports field.
“We’ll find them!” he said.
I shook my head, unable to speak. I knew he was wrong.
I thought of the giant grass field I had run all over; the path to and from the car I’d crisscrossed; the gravel parking lot.
The utter impossibility of ever finding them in such a big space.
I am such an idiot, I whispered.
I just lost my most precious things.
FOR SPORTS!
When we got there, a few kind souls helped us look, and the kids bent over too. This is the field where we were looking:
I knew it was futile.
I thought, Every time I come back to this field, which is going to be 87,000 times over the next few years, I will mourn my beautiful rings and I will kick myself for being so foolish.
I clamped my eyes to the ground, hoping for a sparkle I did not believe would ever come.
It was very quiet as we looked.
Then Nick shouted something. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I started running to him.
Did you find it?!?! I shrieked.
Then he shouted again.
He was holding the other silver and both diamond rings in his hand.
I still cannot believe he found them.
I can’t believe I lost them.
I was so devastated that I felt ashamed for being so devastated. It felt like some great sparkle had just disappeared from my life, and would never come again, and I felt sick because it was my own stupid careless fault, and even worse was this immense sense of shame– that I didn’t deserve those rings, didn’t deserve that much beauty, and so the universe was correcting a wrong by taking them from me.
Which is not even how I believe the universe works.
(At least that’s what I would have told you.)
So I am holding this story with utmost care.
For one thing, I’m noticing that sometimes my “deep certainties” are totally wrong. But mostly I’m keeping watch on the little part of me who apparently does believe this is how the universe works– or is at least afraid it might be. Who, even after all this work and two books and a decade of coaching and getting coached, still wonders, deep down, if maybe all her wants are too big. If everything she longs for is just a little too much.
I’m taking tender care of her.
I’m putting her gently in my pocket and carrying her with me everywhere I go.
Oh but don’t worry: not the pocket with the hole in it.
P.S. Oh hi hello have I mentioned that my new BOOK IS OUT?! If you or anyone you know ever have complicated feelings about life, motherhood, marriage, or generally being human, I think you will find yourself seen and held in these pages.
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The good mother, the bad mother, the bitch, the warrior– they’re all here.
Dear dreamy human, will you please it right now, right this second, before you forget?!?!?
Thank you–
