Maybe you just read, as I did, that U.S. beach volleyball star Kerry Walsh lost her gold wedding band in the sand during her match today. A team of volunteers combed through the sand with metal detectors and located it after a 20-minute search.
For me that story had the immediate “ring” of truth. I just wish I’d had metal detectors and a team of volunteers. The lost wedding ring wasn’t even mine, it was my daughter Alli’s.
Flashback to that night. Alli is 21, married just 6 months. Soon after her wedding we’d become estranged due to a serious disagreement. Now we were just beginning to heal, and we are out to dinner as a family to celebrate her husband’s birthday, along with his friend Nick.
We are dining on the outdoor deck of a restaurant. During dessert, Alli is talking about wedding rings–her ring size at the bottom of the chart, Shane’s at the top. They take off their rings so we can compare the difference. And it was funny seeing them next to each other–Alli’s tiny slim plain gold band, next to Shane’s enormous ring with elaborate Celtic designs, 3 times the size of hers.
Shane reaches across to hand Alli’s ring back to her, and drops it. We hear a slight “pling”, and it’s gone. It’s dark by now, and frantically we all crawl under the table feeling around for the ring on the wooden deck. It’s not there. It fell through the cracks between the boards, or bounced over the side of the deck. Either way it would be hopelessly lost in the greenery underneath where we are sitting.
Alli, who has inherited both my superstitious nature and sense of drama, immediately announces that her entire life with Shane will be cursed unless the ring is found. We walk downstairs along the path that winds through the luxury resort where the restaurant is located. Underneath the deck is a huge landscaped expanse–trees, bushes, flowers, plants, dense undergrowth–which is why I wish we had a metal detector. But we don’t.
The people at the resort are amazingly accomodating, and even set up portable lights so Alli and Shane and Nick can look through the bushes and undergrowth. But it’s impossible. Finding a needle in a haystack would be far easier.
Alli is determined to continue, but after an hour my husband V and I decide to suspend the futile search in the dark. As I am leaving, the restaurant hostess pulls me aside. Cora is Alli’s close friend who has a summer job at this resort. Alli and Shane had decided she would be a great match for his friend Nick, and now that I’ve just met Nick tonight, she wants to know what I think. I’m distracted by the missing ring but I give Cora a thumbs-up.
A few hours later, Alli calls me from their apartment, distraught and distressed. They’re planning to go back the next day. But she is convinced the ring is gone.
So am I. But I’m also a mother, a mother trying to win back my daughter’s heart. So as soon as I wake up the next morning, I drive down to the resort planning to dig through the entire hotel grounds with my bare hands. I walk along the path and look up towards the deck where we were sitting. There’s no possible way to determine how the ring would have bounced, or rolled, or where it might have landed. And it’s plain white gold–with no stone that might help me spot it.
Looking around trying to decide where to begin this hopeless quest, I step into the dirt a short distance from where I’m standing. It’s filled with low dense bushes and plants. As I bend down, trying to gently part the branches, I realize the ring could easily be buried under the dirt, impossible to even see. I’ll never find it.
2 minutes later, I push aside a branch, and there it is. Tucked under a plant. I didn’t even have to get my hands dirty.
Somehow, something led me directly to that spot. And I am completely convinced that it wasn’t something, but someone. My mother died when I was 18, so she never knew Alli. But I know she guided me, her daughter, to find the way back to my daughter.
And it happened. Finding that ring was the catalyst that brought Alli and me together again. Permanently. Proving that sometimes you need to lose something in order to appreciate it. Meaning the ring, and each other.
And this incident is not only a beautiful memory for Alli and me. Our karma reached beyond us, and touched Nick and Cora. Brought together by Alli and Shane that very night, Nick and Cora are getting married in six weeks.
Ruthie says
That is a powerful, touching story. R
Darryle says
I’m really glad you felt that since even at the time it felt that way to me. Thank you.