Spiritual Lessons Learned by Losing (and Finding) my Wedding Rings
You would think, having lost one of my gorgeous antique unique diamond platinum wedding rings out at our spot on the Cosumnes River, I would have learned my lesson but no. On another occasion, I go out to the river with a group of women (see previous column for observations about nudity, still true).
We swim, we talk, we eat a great feast. We clean up. We return home.
As I'm getting out of the car, I remember that I took off my wedding rings before swimming (while it was still vaguely light), I begin looking through every bag I have as I walk to my house, reassuring my concerned women friends with call over my shoulder that "all will be well."
I get to my house and finish inspecting every bag in the light--nothing. Now I'm starting to panic. I call one of the women whom I drove home with, she's still up, where is the table cloth from the table? It's plastic, she tells me, she through it way with all its detritus.
Where is the trash bag? She has already taken it back to the dumpster in our cohousing community.
I look at the clock, it's late, my husband and kids are long asleep. I grab a flashlight (this is before my obsession with headlamps, a piece for another post) and walk back to the dumpster.
Good news bad news when I get to it. The good news? it is completely obvious which bag is the one Amy has just dumped in. The bad news? it's the only bag, alone and the bottom of a full size dumpster.
I pull over a milk crate and reach down low attempting to fish out the bag. Can't get it. I use tools. Still no luck. So, no choice, It's a warm night, with some moon and the alcohol from the evening hasn't completely worn off my bravado. I hoist myself INTO the dumpster.
I look through the bag painstakingly, hopefully. I find nothing. Disappointed, I move to get out of the dumpster. I discover that there's nothing to stand on except a small bag of garbage.
It isn't enough. I discover that I have virtually no upper body strength and cannot hoist myself out of the dumpster, gravity is no help here.
It's 2am and I'm trapped in a dumpster.
I consider yelling for help but I don't want to wake anyone up, but I sure as hell don't want to spend the rest of the night in the dumpster. When I'm under stress of any kind, I eat. I briefly consider the pie pan with remnants that I found when looking through the bag. I discard that thought--I might need the pie more at about 6am.
The floor is gross so I can't sit on it. I have to stand while I think. Periodically, I try to get a toehold on some side of the dumpster or to pull myself up. No luck.
I look at my watch again, it's 2:30am. I've been in the dumpster for half an hour. Time is passing very slowly. I want a shower, bed and clean pie.
The thought of a shower and clean pie somehow gives me a creative impulse and I realize that I have not been fully utilizing the garbage bag. My memory is foggy but there was a breakthrough of some kind and before you know it, I've found a way out of the dumpster.
Hallelujah! I am free. I come home, take my shower and get in bed. I thank god for getting me out of the dumpster, even if the rings could not be found. In the morning, as I open my eyes, I see my wedding rings on the bedside table next to my head.
Spiritual lessons learned: Before I go to drastic lengths to find something, make darn sure it's lost.
Showing posts with label Ring Cycle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ring Cycle. Show all posts
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
The Ring Cycle--Part II
Readers will recall my recently launched series on spiritual lessons learned while losing my wedding rings--read Ring Cycle--Part I for background.
The problem with starting the ring cycle the way I did is that all the other stories will be boring in comparison, but here goes. We used to be members of this amazing camping and swimming park on the Cosumnes River near here called the Van Vleck Memorial Park.
Two of my ring stories start in this setting. The first time, I was with a group of cohousing women on our annual women's night out at the river. I removed my watch and rings, as was my custom, and put the rings on the watch and set them in my car on the divider between the front seats.
We all had a frolicking good time being river nudists after dark in the warm river (with no one else around to see) remarking once again how you can never predict which bodies will look better naked than clothed (it's true: you think you can, but you really can't!).
Afterwards, at home, I realized that one of my rings was missing--one of the diamond platinum set this time, I think the engagement one with the biggest diamond.
Retracing the evening's steps, I figure out (and confirm) that when a neighbor borrowed my watch, the rings fell off it and she thinks there are 2, not 3, she retrieves the 2, putting them on back on the divider, but the 3rd lies lonely and afraid in the cow-trodden grass of the Cosumnes River banks.
The next day I rent a metal detector and convince my friend Jane to take her 4 children and join me out at the river. It is a Monday, not a soul is there.
We locate what we think is the car spot, and crawl on our hands and knees (the children doing the same) looking for the ring. No luck.
We look more, using the detector. No luck.
Hours pass. We get hungry. We had not planned on being here for lunch. I give up looking. I am spent. I drive to the nearest taco bell in Rancho Murieta for sustenance for the group. Jane keeps looking.
While at Taco Bell, my cell phone shows a message has come through without ringing. I retrieve it and it's a very excited Jane, repeating inanely, "I found the ring. I found the ring. I found the ring. I found the ring. I found the ring. I FOUND the ring. I found the RING. I found the ring."
I rush with my tacos and sodas back to the river and we dance on the banks for joy, holding hands in a circle (I think I may have made this part up, but it makes a nice feature to the story).
There it is, the ring, some 100 yards from where we were looking for it. I would have long ago given up if it hadn't been for Jane. She had patience and persistence and a belief that it would be found.
Spiritual Lesson: sometimes to get what you seek, you must ask for help and let go.
The problem with starting the ring cycle the way I did is that all the other stories will be boring in comparison, but here goes. We used to be members of this amazing camping and swimming park on the Cosumnes River near here called the Van Vleck Memorial Park.
Two of my ring stories start in this setting. The first time, I was with a group of cohousing women on our annual women's night out at the river. I removed my watch and rings, as was my custom, and put the rings on the watch and set them in my car on the divider between the front seats.
We all had a frolicking good time being river nudists after dark in the warm river (with no one else around to see) remarking once again how you can never predict which bodies will look better naked than clothed (it's true: you think you can, but you really can't!).
Afterwards, at home, I realized that one of my rings was missing--one of the diamond platinum set this time, I think the engagement one with the biggest diamond.
Retracing the evening's steps, I figure out (and confirm) that when a neighbor borrowed my watch, the rings fell off it and she thinks there are 2, not 3, she retrieves the 2, putting them on back on the divider, but the 3rd lies lonely and afraid in the cow-trodden grass of the Cosumnes River banks.
The next day I rent a metal detector and convince my friend Jane to take her 4 children and join me out at the river. It is a Monday, not a soul is there.
We locate what we think is the car spot, and crawl on our hands and knees (the children doing the same) looking for the ring. No luck.
We look more, using the detector. No luck.
Hours pass. We get hungry. We had not planned on being here for lunch. I give up looking. I am spent. I drive to the nearest taco bell in Rancho Murieta for sustenance for the group. Jane keeps looking.
While at Taco Bell, my cell phone shows a message has come through without ringing. I retrieve it and it's a very excited Jane, repeating inanely, "I found the ring. I found the ring. I found the ring. I found the ring. I found the ring. I FOUND the ring. I found the RING. I found the ring."
I rush with my tacos and sodas back to the river and we dance on the banks for joy, holding hands in a circle (I think I may have made this part up, but it makes a nice feature to the story).
There it is, the ring, some 100 yards from where we were looking for it. I would have long ago given up if it hadn't been for Jane. She had patience and persistence and a belief that it would be found.
Spiritual Lesson: sometimes to get what you seek, you must ask for help and let go.
Monday, October 22, 2007
The Ring Cycle--Part I
Spiritual Lessons Learned from Losing Wedding Rings
Unlike most women, I have 3 wedding rings, one that my husband of 16 years (living together 20) put on my finger, which was two kinds of gold and we chose together, and a platinum and diamond set that my grandfather gave me after Bill and I eloped to New Orleans. My grandfather designed the set and had it made for my grandmother when they were married in the 1920's--it's gorgeous.
Nonetheless, despite the meaning these rings have for me, unlike most women I remove them every night and when I shower or swim because I'm allergic to the metal and my skin needs breaks from it.
As a result of the removal and my corresponding general attitude of carelessness, I have lost these rings several times. In this blog, I am going to begin a series chronicalling the spiritual lessons I have learned from losing my wedding rings.
Story 1:
I am in Buffalo, New York visiting my in-laws. Due to previous close calls, I have deliberately left my diamond set in Sacramento, traveling only with the gold ring (I don't want anyone to think I'm not married!). While in Buffalo, we visit Betty Mensch a wonderful former law professor of ours whose mother has a little house down in the Chataqua, NY (aka PBS Disneyland).
After a nice visit and treat, we swim with the kids in the lake. Later we return to Buffalo and I discover that my ring is missing. Knowing that I went swimming, and would have removed my ring, I call Betty and she turns the little summer house upside down looking for it--no luck.
I look around the house in Buffalo too. I inform my husband that the ring is missing. He seems vaguely alarmed at two things: 1) that I'm categorizing it as "missing" when I'm constantly mislaying the rings and 2) that I don't actually seem particularly bothered by it.
The common theme throughout the ring cycle is this: whenever I am in throes of a ring loss, I am overcome with a feeling of peace. I am filled with a sort of inner knowing that all is well and that the ring will return.
In this instance, the ring didn't. We looked all over the house in Buffalo and didn't find it. We returned to Sacramento with assurances from my mother-in-law that she would have her house cleaner look for it carefully when she vacuumed.
Still no luck. I begin to think, "should I panic? where is my ring? I know it's somewhere." I can't describe this "I know it's somewhere feeling." It's craziness really. But all I can tell you is that throughout this loss, my feeling was "it's not lost. This ring is somewhere, I just don't know where."
Now to the average reader, the difference between "lost" and "I don't know where it is" may seem about like the difference between "dead" and "passed away," i.e., nonexistent. But to me the difference is this: lost is hopeless, and I don't know where it is is a temporary condition easily remedied by knowing where it is--ha!
Anyway, long ring story short, years pass and I don't find the ring. Once I even call the jeweler from whom we bought it to explore the possibility of a replacement, but something in me whispers, "don't bother. It is known where it is."
Two summers later we arrive in Buffalo get to the room in which we typically stay and I open the empty drawer in the dresser to begin to unpack my clothes. There, at the bottom of the drawer, all alone is the ring.
Elated, I pick it up and run around the house with it, "I found my wedding ring! See, it was there all along!"
Spiritual lesson learned: there is no time in God--that ring was there all along waiting for me, just like all my other gifts, if only I know where to look for them.
Unlike most women, I have 3 wedding rings, one that my husband of 16 years (living together 20) put on my finger, which was two kinds of gold and we chose together, and a platinum and diamond set that my grandfather gave me after Bill and I eloped to New Orleans. My grandfather designed the set and had it made for my grandmother when they were married in the 1920's--it's gorgeous.
Nonetheless, despite the meaning these rings have for me, unlike most women I remove them every night and when I shower or swim because I'm allergic to the metal and my skin needs breaks from it.
As a result of the removal and my corresponding general attitude of carelessness, I have lost these rings several times. In this blog, I am going to begin a series chronicalling the spiritual lessons I have learned from losing my wedding rings.
Story 1:
I am in Buffalo, New York visiting my in-laws. Due to previous close calls, I have deliberately left my diamond set in Sacramento, traveling only with the gold ring (I don't want anyone to think I'm not married!). While in Buffalo, we visit Betty Mensch a wonderful former law professor of ours whose mother has a little house down in the Chataqua, NY (aka PBS Disneyland).
After a nice visit and treat, we swim with the kids in the lake. Later we return to Buffalo and I discover that my ring is missing. Knowing that I went swimming, and would have removed my ring, I call Betty and she turns the little summer house upside down looking for it--no luck.
I look around the house in Buffalo too. I inform my husband that the ring is missing. He seems vaguely alarmed at two things: 1) that I'm categorizing it as "missing" when I'm constantly mislaying the rings and 2) that I don't actually seem particularly bothered by it.
The common theme throughout the ring cycle is this: whenever I am in throes of a ring loss, I am overcome with a feeling of peace. I am filled with a sort of inner knowing that all is well and that the ring will return.
In this instance, the ring didn't. We looked all over the house in Buffalo and didn't find it. We returned to Sacramento with assurances from my mother-in-law that she would have her house cleaner look for it carefully when she vacuumed.
Still no luck. I begin to think, "should I panic? where is my ring? I know it's somewhere." I can't describe this "I know it's somewhere feeling." It's craziness really. But all I can tell you is that throughout this loss, my feeling was "it's not lost. This ring is somewhere, I just don't know where."
Now to the average reader, the difference between "lost" and "I don't know where it is" may seem about like the difference between "dead" and "passed away," i.e., nonexistent. But to me the difference is this: lost is hopeless, and I don't know where it is is a temporary condition easily remedied by knowing where it is--ha!
Anyway, long ring story short, years pass and I don't find the ring. Once I even call the jeweler from whom we bought it to explore the possibility of a replacement, but something in me whispers, "don't bother. It is known where it is."
Two summers later we arrive in Buffalo get to the room in which we typically stay and I open the empty drawer in the dresser to begin to unpack my clothes. There, at the bottom of the drawer, all alone is the ring.
Elated, I pick it up and run around the house with it, "I found my wedding ring! See, it was there all along!"
Spiritual lesson learned: there is no time in God--that ring was there all along waiting for me, just like all my other gifts, if only I know where to look for them.
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