Good Lifestyle

By the time my husband suggested me, aengagement ring should have been the least of my concerns. At that time, we are dealing with two grandchildren, a bungalow overflowing from the laundry and toys, challenging parents, and thewedding perspective I did not have both energy and the courage to plan.

But it was the ring I obsessed. During the morning, Prestinic floor, afternoon slaps and the lamp lamp, I scrolled the diamond solitaires, each differentiated from the naked eye. Princess cut, two carats, impeccable clarity and a narrow platinum band, encouraged by a Tiffany jeweler "to better present the diamond".

When my ring finally arrived-fear of its marine velvet lining and slide into my ring with a "yes" to be breathtaking. It was all I could wish in a ring: resilience, transcendence, beauty without conflict. Come think of that, it was thequalities that I wanted in a marriageAlso, all the entities on my finger manicured.

It was not my firstengagement ring That is. It was my fourth. There had been other diamond rings on this finger, each a dazzling promise that I finally failed to keep.

My then-fiance Michael did not bother you. He did not think Icontinuously postponed the marriage And he did not disturb me of my singular setting on the ring - until I lost it. Even in this case, it was not the loss he helped (of course, it helped he was fully assured); It was metaphor.

"YouLost your engagement ring At the wedding! He hissed the next day while our eyes scraped the ground of the outdoor place of the nuptiales we had just attended. We cleaned the batch of gravel for a flare of tellation light that never surfaced.

"You declined several weddings. Was it a subconscious statement? Is there anything else you are trying to tell me?" He asked. No, it was not. And no, there was no.

The ring ordered to fit just right - had been fatally damaged with some abandoned books, an absurd victim of my new fitness routine for our own wedding. We ordered a double replacement: bright, pure and matching perfectly. And with it, an assorted wedding ring: an endless platinum circle of sparkling diamonds.

After getting married, the two rings took a permanent residence on my finger. They were beautiful brilliant reminders of myweddingMy dating husband and our sworn promises one to the other and ourselves. But they were also troublesome - they felt strangers on my jewelry-shunning body, and they quickly became worried stones about the invaluable anxiety I've worried.

Nevertheless, I did not dare to remove my wedding rings: do not shower, do not work, and certainly not be seen in public among the family and friends who could harm the state of my union or Total foreigners who could question my marriageability. Did I care? Copiously. For decades, I had worked hard, on relationships, heat and repair, on myself, and now, on this marriage, a beautiful, a fine, one symbolized by precious metals and gems.

And then, five years in my wedding, my health collapsed thanks to a self-immune disease that struck me with fatigue, gastrointestinal ravages and thyroid failure. My always light frame suddenly wearing 25 pounds. The weight was one thing - not for my husband, who has never seen the woman he has married, a woman now less good, but it was a literal burden on me, a new density that I found restricted.

To cope, I started loosening everything in my life that suddenly pinch: a seatbelt, a lifejacket, a dining room chair drawn too close to a table and yes, my wedding ring. Remove it and move around the world without it feeling like public nudity; Worse worse, I was afraid my husband - whose platinum group was perpetual in his place - could interpret his absence as a statement on our marriage.

Most of the women I've looked up until you have never been seen without their wedding rings. It does not matter the precarious state of his own union, my mother was never without his ordinary group. The ring of my grandmother through various husbands - was still always in her place, even under yellow rubber cleaning gloves, gardening gloves and oven mittens.

But my great-grandmother had offered an example ofSuccessful marriageand the appreciation of the sensitive wedding ring. A southern woman with custom fur coats, white leather luggage sets, an elegant porcelain and crystal contexts, mimmie was deeply proud of her wedding with my great-grandfather, lovely to present her wedding diamonds On one hand perpetually just in hand. She was also an indefatigable harvester, I losing her heels for mud boots in a pigsty, enveloping her freshly colored hair in a scarf at the branches and proliferation of the tree at LOPS and burying her hands in a Rising paste, a fried chicken paste and prepared thinning bays for canned.

Through all this, a statue in his Windowsill cuisine has worn his dazzling wedding set. Its rings were a symbol of romance, but also practicality.

There are rings, I realized and there is also marriage.

Today - even months after the loss of these books, my rings live largely in a pretty ceramic bowl with other delicate and precious objects. Without them, I shape flown pastries, kneading massage oil in my husband's shoulders and handle my fingers through long hair girls. Do not bring them home to their meaning on the hands of others and what they can symbolize: union, fidelity, love or maybe none of them. Maybe the bearing ring is simply a habit. Or maybe they symbolize all these things, with a spouse whose ring or rings mean the same thing.

My wedding rings mean a lot of things for me, but they are no longer performing. I am the same spouse wearing a strip of diamonds that I am without: loving, scrupulous, entirelyengaged in this marriage. While the ring of my husband warmly shines on his left hand, he does not indicate a subpute in my naked ring, kissing the certainty that does not carry them publicly means that they are now a private and sacred treasure.

By eliminating my wedding rings, I may have stripped the symbols of the fidelity of my hand, but they are inefflicably integrated into my heart.