For
the next 10 years, they were busy having babies. Sylvia’s constantly changing
size made fitting a ring nearly impossible, and they were both too busy trying
to care for their rapidly expanding family to worry about a ring.
Entire
Sapphires into the story: Raymond was teaching at a college, gardening, being a
landlord, playing and teaching music to make ends meet. They had just bought their first home – the
home they still live in – and each month they were making their house payments
with just pennies to spare. It was a
very lean time. Sylvia loved seeing
students come to take guitar lessons because they usually paid in cash, and
then she could run to the grocery stores for supplies. During one particularly tough time, a young
man came for lessons. He told Raymond he
couldn’t pay for the lessons he owed in cash and gave him five sapphires from
Thailand. Well, that didn’t buy the days
needed groceries so Sylvia stuck the stones in a drawer and forgot about them.
Finally
it was time for their 20th wedding anniversary. Life was looking up. Raymond had secured a permanent job with
benefits, Sylvia was working, the children were doing well, and there was even
extra money. Raymond decided to find a
jeweler to design wedding rings for both of them. He took the largest of the sapphires to
surprise Sylvia with another ring. The
jeweler designed matching bands with a braided design. On Sylvia’s ring, he placed five teeny tiny
diamond chips to represent their five children.
Then he made a gold and sapphire ring for Sylvia. All the rings were so beautiful.
However,
even these rings, which Raymond and Sylvia still wear today, had issues. The jeweler hadn’t soldered the braid
properly on Raymond’s ring, and it continually caught on things. It annoyed Raymond a great deal, but he tried
not to complain since he had refused to wear any ring for so long. Also, the tiny diamond chips in Sylvia’s ring
kept falling out. Each time she lost a
chip, one of the children would ask, “Which one of us did you lose momma?” While it cost very little to replace the
chips, it was disconcerting to her and the children. And the sapphire ring – well it’s gone. Sylvia went swimming and lost it in a pool. Bergmann’s
Jewelers finally fixed both wedding rings – the chips never fell out again, and
Raymond’s ring braid behaved.
In
the later years of Sylvia’s mother’s life, she wanted to give something to
Sylvia. She decided to give her the
diamond engagement ring from Sylvia’s dad.
Sylvia remembered the sapphires in the drawer, and thought it would be special
to add two sapphires to the ring as a reminder of how far they had come from
those early days of counting pennies to pay the mortgage and make matching
earrings. Unfortunately, she couldn’t
find the four sapphires. Raymond and
Sylvia looked and looked and finally located two of them. The others must have slipped through cracks
in the drawer. Imagine their surprise
when they took those two sapphires to the jeweler and learned sapphires would have not only helped with the
groceries but also the house payment!
They added them to the ring, and Sylvia wore it proudly for many years. Still there were problems. Since the gems were high on the band, Sylvia
had several mishaps. She lost one sapphire
but found it again, and then she lost another one - never to be found. She quietly put her mother’s diamond away
with the remaining sapphire.
That
brings us to the rings being blessed here today. Sylvia’s ring has her mother’s diamond and
two sapphires. Unfortunately, neither is
from the original Thailand sapphires.
The jeweler couldn’t match the color or the shape of the remaining
sapphire so they are new. She reset the
remaining Thailand sapphire in her mother’s original gold engagement band. Raymond’s band matches Sylvia’s ring. Both rings are inscribed with the term of endearment
they use for each other – “MiVida”– without a year. After all, their love is eternal…even if
rings have proved to be less than that.
We just keep paddling on....:-)
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