The ring

Things have been a bit tight in the budgetary department. I don't normally ask for help, but I made that very difficult call to mom last week, filled her in on some of the continuing chaos, let her know how dire the financial picture is and that, in all honesty, I'm overwhelmed. I also have plans about attacking one item at a time and she agreed that I've been thoughtful, am making good decisions. I was only asking for a little grocery money - my friends have stepped up (most exceptionally RK, who is my hero more often than I can say) and we don't go hungry. But my mom, who is in a very good financial position, should be helping her daughter and grandkids.

I got the call yesterday - she was coming by at lunch time to drop off something. A little cash for necessities (thanks, mom) and something else. Something that blew me out of the water.

I was married when I was 19 to a somewhat nice guy with a little drinking problem and some stalker tendencies. Things dissolved quickly into a horrible situation from which I had to rescue myself - and I did. Landed on my own two feet, slightly scathed but basically none the worse for wear. I had to borrow a little money from mom to extricate myself (making $4.32 an hour didn't allow for much of a savings account) and I gave her my engagement ring to sell to get back the couple hundred dollars I'd borrowed. I thought nothing of it, she never mentioned it again.

Fast forward to 2008 - over 20 years since that wedding day in April. I spent 3 years paying off that ring that I didn't even wear for one. Live and learn, that's my motto for the moment. Well, she kept it all these years, had it reset into a ring she thought she might wear or give to my children at some point. It was in the envelope with the cash she left for us. I can't tell you how weird it is to be looking at this memento of something so old, so long ago and so forgotten. I have to get this thing appraised and sell it. Rent's past due and every little bit will help. But what does it mean that there are absolutely zero feelings around this ring that meant so much once? Maybe because it is a thing, and because I spent many hours and thousands of dollars in a therapists chair, talking about what I did, what went wrong, my responsibility for the mess that was a marriage at 19.

So the ring sits here, mocking me a little bit. I spent over a thousand dollars on it (that's more than the entire cost of my wedding to Keith, including rings. Ryan selected a very expensive ring and I ended up paying for it - that's relationship #1 in a nutshell). After we split up and I started to heal, I considered it money well spent on figuring out who I was, who I wanted to be and how to grow up.

Someone very wise told me recently that when you get a big windfall and something happens - a death, a divorce, an illness - that costs a lot of money, when you had other plans for that cash, it means that the universe provided. I sold my house, then Keith got sick. Without that money, he'd be living in a cardboard box, paying off 20 grand in chemotherapy bills for the rest of his life. Not acceptable. Thanks, universe.

And thanks for my mother being aware that some day I might need this sparkly piece of stone back. It may only gain me a couple hundred dollars, but the lesson I'm reminded of today is priceless. The universe provides. Thanks, universe...