Shivers

Okay, so I had writing group tonight, which kicked ass. Here's something I wrote that everyone agreed with. P.S., it's only about 10% true.

She gave it to me for my college graduation, my first adult piece of jewelry. She explained, as she held my hand in hers—identical across sixty years—and slipped the band over my young knuckle, that the ruby had been her mother’s. The diamonds had been earrings, a gift her father had given her mother for an anniversary. And the far away look in her eyes as she tightened her grip brought me with her to the past, to a place I could never go, a place she could never truly describe.

She gave my sister a pendent with a charm that was worth a lot of money because that was what she wanted, and my sister left it at a bar when a boy tangled it in her hair.

Years after my graduation I went to visit Grandma. I introduced my husband to her. I showed her my band, set with the ring she had given me.

“I thought you lost it,” she said, smiling at me holding my hands in hrs.

I leaned down to kiss her and whispered in her ear that it was worth more than all of the other jewelry I could ever own.

Months later, as we gathered around the kitchen table with the will out in front of us, my grandfather took a small velvet sack from his breast pocket, turned it over and shook a small object into his palm. It clinked against his wedding band.

“This, dear heart, is for you.” And my mother looked at my sister; my sister spit anger at me.

“That’s not fair!”

I took the ring, her engagement ring, and examined it. An old trinket, nothing more, a diamond ten times smaller than my own and the inscription on the inside of the band: “appreciation.”