The ring

[chanaleh]

I guess it's not surprising that the first thing that everyone (e.g., bluepapercup, my entire office) seems to ask when they hear about my engagement is, "Let's see the ring!!" (Well, that's not quite true. Mostly it's "What?! To whom??" But then the ring.)

And I almost didn't want to really post about it. Because I just don't care that much about the ring *as* a ring... and in fact it feels wrong, or somehow even inappropriate, to make a big deal about the "ooh, shiny!" aspect.

I am fully aware that this reaction, tied up with my ambivalence about wedding trappings in general, comes as a direct result of my last experience, which was all wedding and no marriage. In mid-October, around week 4, etrace asked me in an email: "...what kind of wedding do you want? Assuming you want to get married again, at some point, to somebody. :) ... Um, yeah. Not that I'm assuming anything! ... But I am curious about what you think about when you imagine getting married again." And I wrote back:

Suffice it to say: if you only knew how OVER the whole "wedding" thing I am. I can't even enjoy thinking about it. ... The only, absolutely only thing I actually care about anymore w/r/t any sort of marriage ceremony is the *partner* I do it with. ... The thought of having anything more elaborate than a little cake and champagne afterwards makes me positively itch.

... I'm hoping now that I might be able to get a little bit past that, as the next few months wear on -- stop feeling and acting like my lifetime supply of celebratory karma is already overdrawn, and figure out how best to honor this momentous transition in our life on its own terms. Everything about this experience already feels so different in every way; I got caught up the first time in the whole wedding mythos and feeling like I had somehow accomplished something just by getting to that point; this time it is so entirely about the shared life that we want to have and create, I find that I feel strangely private and protective about it. The only reason I cared about moving ahead with the formal engagement was that I was already, after seven weeks, getting so tired of pretending to the rest of the world that this was anything less than 100% definite or 100% life-changing. And it's almost mystifying to circle back around to the realization that, no, this very personal transition is what people are congratulating us for, are happy for us for, want to know about; this is the real deal.

Anyway. But then it occurred to me that given how much thought and care etrace put into picking the ring out for me (actually, in the end, custom-designing it -- and on a rush schedule!), it would be a nice thing to say a little about that, and to explain the semiotics... and to show it off not because it is a shiny thing per se, but because I'm incredibly thrilled with it and proud to have it.

So.

The photo here is a little blurry, but it's the only close-up I've taken to date. I took it with my phone in Central Park shortly after the big moment -- I think even before we started taking the pictures of ourselves for posterity -- so that I could text it to jessruth and ablock going, "Ahem!"

It is a three-stone setting that is apparently known as a "Past, Present, Future" design. The day that etrace started looking at rings, they showed him some of these and he immediately thought how perfect and symbolic that construction is for us. And so it is. The center stone is a star sapphire, which is a special stone in his family; his late father had a much-prized blue star sapphire ring. And the smaller side stones are diamonds.

When we talked about it on the phone (because, oh yes, we did) the night after his first ring-shopping excursion, he said, "Well, I want it to be a surprise, but I also want to make sure it's going to be something you like, so... do you have any suggestions? Requests? Do you want a diamond?" And I said that I really didn't. The first time around, that was all I wanted, a plain diamond solitaire, as traditional as could be; but this time I'd really just as soon have something not that. And I suggested that a star sapphire (which had come up several times in previous conversations) sounded like a pretty awesome choice. And he mentioned the past-present-future concept, and I said that sounded awesome too. He asked if I had a preference for yellow gold (since that's what I seem to wear in everything else), and I said that yes, as far as that goes, I really do. The next night, having pondered it some more, my one additional piece of feedback was "I really like round stones the best," and he said, "Oh, great, that's exactly what I was looking at. OK, I have enough to go on now."

I thought about adding that a style I have always particularly liked is what they call a bezel setting, with a solid strip of metal all the way around the stone. But I decided I didn't actually want to make any more specific requests. So then, on Saturday, when he opened the ring box to offer it to me, the first words out of my mouth were "Oh! That's my favorite setting!" Because that's exactly what he had picked out, just because he liked the look of it, too.

Star sapphires are necessarily semitransparent, and are cut domed rather than faceted in order to best show off the "asterism" (six-pointed star effect when the light hits it). So the overall picture reminds me of a tiny blue planet, ringed with gold, flanked with two more twinkling little celestial bodies. Perfect token from a onetime astronomer. The moon and the stars.

And it's on a lovely sturdy 3mm yellow gold band. Which I think is exactly what I will want in a wedding band, then, to match it. But maybe we'll go back to the same shop and see what they can suggest for us.


... The second thing everyone seems to ask is "Let's hear the story!!" And I keep saying, there isn't so much a story; not of the proposal. The story is in the relationship, the history, the miracle of our coming [back] together as we have.

But for the record, it was in Central Park, at my favorite waterfall. etrace also wrote a bit about both the backstory and the getting and the giving of the ring, which covers most of the important points. :-)