Saturday, July 18, 2015

The Ring

Ever since the early days of our honeymoon, whenever he entered water, M would clutch his wedding ring. Ball his left hand up in a fist. Contort his fingers in a way that made swimming difficult, snorkeling nearly impossible. He was terrified of losing his ring in the sea, the pool, the ocean, the lake. And I would laugh, and say he was being overly cautious. And that rings don't just slip off fingers into the depths.

 And then last Friday, it did. F me. It did.

 D was under the umbrella, playing in the sand. M was in the water. I was in the surf, attempting to catch baby horseshoe crabs so I could run up and show D since we've been reading this book. It was a perfect, perfect late afternoon at the beach.

 M thought I was ridiculous. So of course I gloated and cheered when I finally got one. He raised his hands to echo my cheer, and then realized his ring was gone.

 Waist-deep. Low tide. I ran out to help but no way any amount of feeling around with toes was going to surface our wedding band. But then D disappeared behind the umbrella and out of my sight line, so given the choice between animate and inanimate object, I chose to go find D, who, for the record, was not nearly as impressed with the horseshoe crab as I wanted him to be.

 M was/is distraught. In his mind, he failed us. Failed me. Losing the ring was tantamount to cheating and how would I ever forgive him. How would he forgive himself? He was inconsolable. To the point where I felt really, really badly about not caring.

 In my mind. It's a ring. Simply a ring. No more. No less. One of many objects that can possibly and most likely be lost. I offered to throw mine into the sea as well. He balked. We'd need mine to find his replacement. Ok. fine. But I just couldn't muster up the kind of sympathy M was needing (I usually can't) and was getting annoyed at his "I knew this would happen"s.

 So I turned to the practical. It's lost. What can be done? I posted on FB and started googling to see if I could find a local metal detector club. I posted on Craigslist. I went up to the police station to file a lost/missing item report in case we needed it for insurance. I removed the FB post bc M said he was embarrassed and ashamed. I deleted the craigslist post after talking with the secretary at the police station, also an avid metal detector user. "Ain't nobody turning anything in; we're all looking for our million dollar ring."

 Well, this is nowhere near a million dollar ring, but M was carrying a weight as if it was. A few days after the loss, he's mellowed a little. Each day seems to make it a little easier for him to stomach. After it happened, I was seriously worried that he'd never want to go to the beach again, but we managed to salvage the weekend. D would see us eying the sand and the surf hoping to catch sight of it and ask us what we were looking for. "More hermit crabs?"

"Horseshoe crabs, D. And no. Daddy lost his ring."

"Oh. I lost my bagel this morning, too."

 Oh D. You sweet, sweet thing. Yes, you did. (it fell in the sand.)

 **

 So tell me, dear readers. What would you do if you lost your wedding band? Are you more of an M or a me here? And how and how soon would you fill that missing and untanned space on your finger?
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