Patina

photo by Tommy Hobbins, age 4.

It is late in the afternoon and I am folding laundry while my 4-year-old is digging through my jewelry box. Normally the box is off limits, but today has been a slow, sluggish day and my parenting gusto has followed suit. It is snowing outside, I’m coming down with something and I’m counting down the minutes until Dad gets home.

The little guy comes over to me with a silver ring with a large rectangular bright-blue turquoise stone on the band. It is a ring my Dad bought me for my birthday from a shop called Denny’s Wigwam in Kanab, Utah, where he used to live.  “Mom, do you want to wear this? It is beautiful.”

“Sure.” I say nonchalantly. He gingerly slides it onto my finger and goes back to the box.

A minute or so later, “Mom, how about this one?” He has brought over a tarnished spoon ring that a dear friend and I had made in college. The two of us took old silver spoons we had found to a jeweler to have him make matching rings. He puts it on my finger and returns to his treasure hunt.

The next one—a dark, shiny, black band—I bought in Sicily on our honeymoon. It is volcanic rock from Mount Etna, which just happened to erupt when our plane landed on the island.

Then my Grandmother’s mother’s ring. It has a birthstone for each of her kids and grandkids. The stones are in a symmetrical pattern with four amethysts on one side, four peridots on the other and a diamond in the middle for her baby Dean, who passed away at two-days-old. The stones are so worn they are nearly round on the top. She left it to me.

The next, I bought in San Antonio when I traveled there with AmeriCorps. During my year of service, I tutored first graders, emptied flooded homes in Houston and worked with the Red Cross after 9-11. I also learned that the world was big—so big—but also so open and ready. That ring is silver with two coral stones and an empty spot in the middle where a third fell out. I always thought I’d fix it.

He continues bringing rings over until I have at least one on every finger: one that belonged to my great-grandmother; one from a best friend in high school; a birthstone ring from my grandmother, Ruth—when she gave it to me, I was a child and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Once my hands are dripping with jewels, he stands back, looks at his handiwork and says, “Mom, you are beautiful. Like a rainbow!”

I look down at my hands. They look a little older then I remember. The wrinkles more pronounced, my skin a little thinner, my veins and tendons peeking through. I look at each ring. Half of them are tarnished, several broken. But as I look down at my hands, I know he is right, they are beautiful. Like a rainbow.