No Method, Just Madness

So now that all of you have emptied the contents of your stomach into the barf bag you just happened to have handy, wasn’t that a cute little engagement story? It was, wasn’t it. The Brit completely outdid himself on that one and he knows he did, too. Everyday he comes home from work and goes, “So, what other good things did your readers say about me? That I’m a keeper? A great catch?” Seriously, people!

Cheeky, isn’t he?!?! I swear, I think he’s enjoying the praise and honors he’s collecting from the whole proposal story more than the four days we spent in Hawaii! But it’s ok…he deserves all the accolades he’s getting. In my book, anyone who goes through all that trouble to put me in such close proximity to cheese, friends AND a private secluded beach bungalow, deserves not only mad props but also the privilege of entering into a binding contractual agreement with me that stipulates unlimited back scratching for the rest of the lives of both involved parties. (This will be on our marriage certificate, by the way.)

He done good, that Brit. And among the many things I need to give him credit for in this whole elaborate shindig of a proposal, is the covert enlisting of the efforts of my dearest Dochechka to find out what kind of ring I’d want. Well before I started harassing him about planning my thirtieth birthday, he’d already been meeting with Dochechka and planning not only my Big Three OHHH Bash but this Crazy Ass Surprise 3 Year Anniversary Scavenger Hunt a la Trip to Hawaii Marriage Proposal. (I think you’ll agree that deserved capital letters.) Right around March/April, Dochechka slipped a few sly questions in regular conversation with me about what sort of thing I’d want, you know, “should The Brit ever consult” her. I hadn’t really thought about it much ever, but man, when she asked me to brainstorm, I came up with more ideas than a scrotum has wrinkles! And immediately after my birthday was over, Dochechka and The Brit went into Top Secret Operation Find That Ring La Cubana Gringa Described To Dochechka In Diva-Like Detail. They met at jewelry shops all over San Francisco on Friday afternoons. Weekly. They searched. High and Low. A la izquierda y a la derecha. This way and that way. And they could not find what I wanted.

Probably because I wanted something so nontraditional and so NOT a diamond, that jewelers were confused. Discombobulated. Bamboozled, if you will. What sane girl does not want a diamond engagement ring? Me. And I’ll tell you why…all 8 of you (I think I picked up another reader when The Brit recently emailed my blog address to everyone he knows).

I’ve always loved a bold splash of color…particularly red. It’s my favorite color. And several years back, my Abuelita (wife to this crazy, lovable mofo and mother to my equally crazy, lovable Mamacusa) came back from a trip to Spain with a huge garnet ring. It was beautiful and MAN did I want that thing! I would admire it all the time and she took notice of it, apparently. Because the very next Christmas, she gave it to me as a gift. And when I protested (for show, of course) she said, “I would leave it to you after I’m gone, but I’d rather give it to you now so that I can see you enjoy it.” It meant the world to me that she would gift me the ring so soon after she’d gotten it for herself.

I wore that ring constantly…taking it off only when I put hand lotion on. And one day (and I’ll cut to the chase on this because it still SERIOUSLY upsets me to even write about this) I lost it. One afternoon, my senior year in college, I was sitting in my room working through some assigments in Satan’s favorite subject (biochemistry) when I went to do the thing that I usually did with the ring…you know, that little swivel it around your finger thing you do subconsciously. And it wasn’t there. I immediately panicked. (Which is quite different from what I’d do now as a mature adult: panic in a delayed fashion over a longer, more sustained period of time.) I tore my apartment apart in search of it. Which was difficult to do properly with tears streaming down my face. So I did it three times. And then I sat myself down and thought hard. Where could it be? I thought and thought and thought. And, finally, I honed in on the moment that I last had it. I’d driven up to SF in my pickup truck the day prior and I had a distinct memory of taking the ring off while driving, setting it in my lap so that I could put some hand lotion on, and then I just must have never put it back on. And, presumably, when I got out of the truck in SF, the ring fell out of my lap. It certainly wasn’t in my truck because I tore the seats out of that thing. And then I had someone else tear the seats out of it again just to be sure. It was gone.

Now, let’s, first of all, establish that I cried for three solid days about that friggin’ ring…it was the only piece of jewelry I ever owned that meant something to me. And let’s, second of all, establish that God should do the lucky person who ever found that thing a favor and NOT put them in my path…for, Lo, there would be carnage!

Anywhoo, when Dochechka discretely poked me about what I’d want in a ring, I thought, what better way to symbolize my marriage to The Brit and simultaneously resurrect the spirit of my Abuelita’s gift than to have a garnet engagement ring. And so that’s what I asked for.

After searching for and not finding the perfect thing, The Brit and Dochechka worked for several months with a jeweler to have it custom made. And, truth be told, it’s more beautiful than I could have ever designed myself…

I looked it up. Garnet is supposedly the stone of love, commitment, health and positive energy. I usually laugh at that hippie, cosmic, third moon of Jupiter rising with Your Anus Uranus in the second house kind of crap, but I wear this ring now and, just with this ring, I actually believe it. I look at it and truly feel the love and the positive energy that The Brit (and Dochechka!) put into making it for me…and the love that Abuelita gifted me when she gave me her garnet ring several years ago.

My grandmother passed away a few years ago. But, Abuelita, I hope you’re watching from up there, because I want you to see me enjoy it! (I promise I’ll watch this one a little more closely!)