When I travel, I never bring my wedding ring on trips. I don't wear it, I don't pack it, nothing. Instead, I leave it at home, safely nestled in its original padded box. Here's why:

When I travel, I never bring my wedding ring on trips.  I don't wear it, I don't pack it, nothing.  Instead, I leave it at home, safely nestled in its original padded box.  Here's why:

When John and I first decided to get married (I was 19, he was 23--enough said), I went to the local mall and picked out a ring for $365. I picked it out purely on looks.  I knew nothing about the diamonds, or their quality.  It just looked nice on my finger.  At the time, John asked me if I was sure about the ring.  Didn't I want something bigger?  Nope.  I didn't want to get into debt, and the diamonds were in the shape of a flower.  What more could I want?

I wore that ring for 15 years until one morning, while living in Germany, it disappeared.  We searched everywhere.  I had left it on the vanity in the bathroom.  It wasn't until several days later (and after the trash had been taken out and collected) that John saw one of the cats sitting on the vanity, playing with my jewelry.  Conveniently enough, the bathroom trash can was sitting directly under the edge of the vanity.  We're guessing that the ring ended up in the trash.

I was a little bit sad, but not that much.  I've never really put much stock in any one "thing".  I don't wear much jewelry, I don't wear fancy clothes, I don't even insist on a nice new car (although step away from the Volvo, or I will scratch out your eyes).  John looked at this as a prime opportunity.

An opportunity to get me the ring he had always felt I deserved.

Lo and behold, what should be within a five hour drive?  Antwerp, diamond capitol of the world.  One post-call day, John and I headed up there.  It was amazing to see the rows and rows and streets and streets full of stores selling diamonds.  Diamond rings, diamond earrings, diamond necklaces.  If you can cover it in diamonds, they were selling it.  For anyone who has visited the pottery factories in Poland, it was much the same feeling.  One feels completely overwhelmed with how much is offered.

The first store we entered, Diamonds on Vesting, was off on a side street, away from the business of the main streets.  The proprietor's name was Mr. Abajian, and as we quickly discovered (while walking through the double security doors), all of his rings were originals.  In other words, he designed every one.  He even had more than just diamonds.  He had incorporated emeralds, and amythest, and rubies into his works of art.  I sat down and within minutes, I had found the ring I loved.

Here's the appraisal--just for kicks...

The band was made of 18K gold which at the time disappointed me a bit.  The trend was to have platinum bands which Mr. Abajian said he didn't make, but now that the price of gold is sky-high, I see the wisdom in his choice.  There were three diamonds--one larger one in the center, and two smaller ones on the side, all of them princess cut.  I didn't know it before, but princess cut diamonds are my favorite.  They have clean lines, and they sparkle more than any other diamond because of the cut.  The larger diamond was 1.18 carats and rated IF which translates to "Internally Flawless" meaning that the diamond is completely free of blemishes and inclusions even under 10x magnification.  In other words, with a jeweler's loupe, no flaws can be seen within the diamond.  The two diamonds on either side were one carat each and rated VVS, one step down from IF, meaning that only an expert can detect flaws with the same microscope.  Despite all of these details, I knew that that ring belonged on my finger.

John, remembering how I chose my original wedding ring, asked about the details, but then insisted that we shop at more stores.  Every other ring after that was merely a carbon copy of another ring down the street.  I felt like I was seeing the same rings in each store, and my mind kept going back to Mr. Abajian's.  The craziest moment was when we walked in an unmarked door down one of the side streets.  It was a dark warehouse that sold loose diamonds.  We were escorted to the back of the warehouse where we sat down on one side of a metal desk with a guy and his bag of diamonds on the other side.  The only light in the room was from a lamp that stood on his desk.  He showed us several diamonds.  It all seemed very...mafia, Belgium style.

We left that day with no ring on my finger, but with possibilities in mind.

John got home and started calling jewelers back in the States to see if he could find or create the same ring for a cheaper price.  Afterall, Europe had switched to the euro, and the euro had just begun to overtake the dollar in value.  Funny thing--all of the jewelers said they would need to travel to Antwerp to get the quality of diamonds we were looking for, and they would cost at least one and a half times the price that Mr. Abajian was charging.

Fast forward a couple of months.  Ethan came home from school with terrible stomach pain.  In fact, he was basically crawling the walls with pain.  I unsuccessfully tried to contact John to ask him if I should take him into the ER.  When Ethan started vomiting, I took him in.  For the next three hours, I waited anxiously next to Ethan's side, watching him get sicker and sicker, and nobody on the base could contact John.  Turns out, Ethan had appendicitis.

At 10 o'clock that night, John showed up.  I railed into him, asking him where he had been, and why I had been unable to get ahold of him.  He just went into doctor mode and disappeared into the black hole where doctors go in the emergency room.  My concern for Ethan took over my thoughts, and I didn't think of John again.

Five days later was our anniversary.  John brought in the junkiest jewelry box (turns out he had picked it up at a garage sale while running on our recent trip to Florida--this could be a post in and of itself).  Don't think I wasn't a bit disappointed--yes, I obviously needed one since my jewelry wasn't safe on the bathroom vanity, but couldn't he have spent a few more dollars and gotten me a nicer one?  As I was trying to look interested and pulled out the different drawers, a small black jewelry box appeared inside one of them.  I honestly didn't make the connection of what it could be--John frequently buys me jewelry, and this wasn't out of the ordinary.

When I opened that box, I'm ashamed to say that tears began running down my face.  It was one of the most beautiful "things" I had ever seen.  I slipped it on my finger, and I felt like it had always been a part of me.  Words just can't describe it.

After wearing that ring for a few weeks, I came to appreciate that I was glad my original ring was lost.  It was okay because of it's sentimental value, but this new ring was glorious.  Too, we could never have afforded my current ring when we were just students.  Maybe my original ring was just meant to be a "place holder" until I could get this one.

Again, I remind you that I don't value "things" at all, but for some reason, this ring was different.

I'm sure some of my money-minded relatives at this point are wondering exactly how much the ring is worth.  While I can't tell you that (it would be tacky, and possibly horrifying to your psyches), I can tell you that John had the foresight to insure the ring through USAA.

Three months later, we headed to Switzerland to try out downhill skiing for the first time.  For some reason, John and I were in a bad place that week, and we were fighting like cats and dogs.  I don't know if it was because of the freakishly small hotel room we had with the overflowing toilet, or the stress of downhill skiing, but we were fighting.  The morning before we left to go sledding, my mother's words reverberated in my brain:  "Never leave anything valuable in a hotel room."  Worried that if I left my ring in the hotel room, it would be stolen, and that if I kept my ring on my finger, it would slip off at some point while removing and replacing my gloves, I tucked the ring safely away in a zipper pocket in my parka along with my gold Claddaugh ring (from Ireland).

Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking very clearly that day (my days are always off when John and I are having troubles), and I also stowed our video camera in that pocket.  The video camera went in and out of that pocket all day long.

Yes, what you're thinking happened, happened.

Sometime during the day, amongst the snow and ski lifts and more snow, my ring fell out of the pocket.  That night, John tore apart the hotel room looking for it, although I insisted that it wasn't there.  In desperation, he went down to the one and only gas station in the area and bought a flashlight.  Unfortunately, the only kind of flashlight that the gas station stocked was the kind that goes on a keychain.  He then proceeded back to the ski area, retracing our steps from the day, looking through the snow banks with the micro flashlight.  He came home completely disheartened.

The next day, we somehow acquired the number of the local police, but nobody had turned it in.  Of course they hadn't.  Who would?  It was like winning the lottery.  That ring could buy them a car, or put their child through college.

I was sick about the whole thing.  The only thing good that came of it all was that John and I worked on and worried about it together for the rest of the trip, and we stopped fighting.

Did I mention that it was insured?  Thank goodness for John's foresight.  He called up USAA, and within a week, we had a check for the insured amount.  Now we just needed to pray that the price of the euro hadn't gone up too much, nor had the price of diamonds or gold.

John called up Mr. Abajian and told him the story.  We felt horribly embarrassed that we had lost of his original creations.  In fact, the only way he could recreate the ring was from the picture that he had given us of the ring along with the details of the diamonds.  It took him several weeks to find the same diamonds.  The main diamond has a large "table" meaning it's shallow in depth but wide on the surface.  Too, did I mention it was flawless?  And over a carat?  And princess cut (which isn't the most popular cut at the moment)?  It took him a while, but he found another one, along with the two side diamonds and within a couple of months, I had a duplicate of the original ring.

I love my ring so much that I am determined to take it with me into the afterlife (even though we are told that we take nothing but our intelligence).  Here's the plan:

When I'm about to die, I'm going to swallow my ring.  The embalmers will leave the ring in my belly.  After I'm buried, my body will begin to decompose.  The ring will fall through my ribs to the bottom of the coffin underneath.  When I'm resurrected (as we all will be), as I'm coming up out of the grave, I'm going to reach back into the coffin, grab my ring and slip it back on my finger.

Really, I've got it all planned out :-)

And this is why I don't ever travel with my wedding ring anymore.  I feel bad when I don't have it, especially when we're visiting nice restaurants on trips, or going out for a special evening.  However, I don't trust myself.  It belongs one of three places:  on my finger, on the piano stand (I don't play piano with rings on), or in it's box.  I love my wedding ring.