Lost objects
Ode to my favorite ring
About a year and a half ago, I misplaced a prized piece of jewelry. It was a gold ring handed down from my great-grandmother and patterned with geometric lines allegedly made of human hair, though they looked like brown braided string. The ring held a similar meaning to a locket wherein you keep a loved one’s tresses, except that here, the hair was woven into the metal itself.
I loved that ring and wore it often.
It took me a few weeks to realize I’d lost it. During that time, I had traveled back to the east coast and stayed at several different houses. Then I’d visited my parents and came back to Alaska only to dive into a highly social month with a relatively new friend group. Plus, the house I was renting had open floor vents into which my cat was known to bat small things.
Once I noticed it was gone, I kept expecting the ring to turn up. I wouldn’t say I’m the most organized person, but I keep systems in which things tend to have their place. I’ve never lost my keys or wallet or phone, or really anything of value.
I asked a few people if they’d seen it. Maybe I’d taken it off before going into a friend’s sauna. Maybe I’d left it back in New York. I removed the grates from my floor vents and peeked around in those, too. There I found a summer guest’s long-lost airpod, a perfect cat toy. But still no ring.
*
I started writing a post about the ring last fall, then abandoned it. I didn’t want to write about it until I’d found it and could thus complete the narrative arc. A hero’s journey of loss, struggle, and ultimate triumph. A lesson learned about paying attention to my valuables and keeping them safe.
But all of that presumes that I will, indeed, recover this ring. And nothing so far has given me hope that that will happen.
There’s been a trend of public figures sharing their experiences from “the middle” of a journey instead of at the end. I’m thinking about Haley Nahman trying to get pregnant. I’m thinking about Christen Press announcing she has to have yet another knee surgery when she otherwise expected to be ready to get back on the soccer field. And I’m also thinking about a lot of Holly Whitaker ‘s writing over the past few years from what she calls a “long residence in the liminal.”
Rather than waiting to share the perfect ending, people have chosen to speak while struggling through the middle with no idea how things will turn out.
*
For a while I felt guilty about losing my ring, mainly because I don’t know where and when I misplaced it. On a recent episode of Vibe Check, Zach Stafford shared about losing (and then finding) his keys in a movie theatre. The story involved a secret hole in that particular theatre’s seats, helpful staff, and the full hero’s arc of emotion.
What I most envied, even more than his happy ending, was that he knew the exact moment when his keys fell out of his pocket. I’ve felt that many times before: the simple knowing of when an item you value (or need) has left your possession.
Unlike Zach, I have no idea when or where I lost my ring. That was a chaotic time, and my attention was scattered. Moving is hard, as is rebuilding social support structures. In leaping fully into that phase of my life, I may have let some things go.
*
It’s time to accept that the ring is gone. I will likely never recover it. And unlike other things, it feels irreplaceable. I can’t just order a new one or have one made.
Instead, I must live with the consequences of my actions. Losing things often feels random: you can’t predict that there would be a keys-sized hole in your movie theatre seat, or that your cat will bat the airpod at exactly the right angle to be completely out of view.
But there’s something to be said for zooming out from the single random act to acknowledge the greater conditions that allow for such randomness to take place.
Rory Smith wrote an excellent article about the U.S. women’s national soccer team’s historically early exit from this year’s World Cup. In it, he explained that although the U.S.’s loss to Sweden could technically be explained by a “tiny gap” between the Swedish player’s penalty kick and the goal line—a millimeter that confirmed the Swedes had in fact made the game-winning goal—the reality is that the U.S. team had set itself up for failure long before that one seemingly random penalty kick.
The U.S. only made it to penalties against Sweden because it couldn’t score a goal during the entire regular game and overtime. And the U.S. only played Sweden, a formidable team, because it failed to win its group stage matches. To keep zooming out, the U.S. failed to win its group stage matches in large part due to poor coaching and tactical decisions over the past few years that made otherwise world-class players appear lost and ineffective at the game they know best.
Luck is always a factor. The universe is random and sometimes cruel. But the flip side is that, when we pay attention to the things that matter, randomness can follow favorably.
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Losing my favorite ring, a family heirloom, revealed more than one moment of life’s random cruelty. As someone prone to moralizing, I’ve come to take it as a sign of my own lack of attention at the moment—my lopsided priorities as I attempted to settle into a new phase of life.
Perhaps if I’d been more present, I wouldn’t have left it wherever I did. Perhaps if I hadn’t been so busy, I would have realized it was gone sooner.
At the same time, that month of travel and socializing was extremely fun. I can’t say I regret it. The tension between freedom and security will always exist, and I vacillate between the two.
Change necessarily involves loss—I suppose I just wish the price hadn’t been this particular well-loved treasure. I also wish I’d had the chance to pass it along intentionally instead of losing it this way.
I hope by now another human has found it. Who knows? Maybe, and no doubt feeling a bit like Sméagol, I’ll one day get it back.
Thank you for this. I lost a ring that was very important to me a few days ago. It was passed along to me when my grandmother died when I was 8 years old. I have worn it daily for years. It became even more special to me when the rest of my grandmother’s jewelry collection was stolen from my apartment a few years ago. There was nothing of value in the collection, other than to me. While sorting through countless papers and trinkets getting ready to move, the stone (really a piece of Bakelite) fell out and I haven’t found it. I also turned to moralizing and thinking I needed a lesson about letting go of material possessions as I prepare to move. Or that I should have treated it more carefully since it was so precious to me.
So, thank you for sharing your story, it brought me a little peace to know someone else went through a similar experience while in the midst of a major life change.
I’m sorry about your ring and hope it makes it’s way back to you. All the best to you in your new life phase.
I feel the dismay and (seemingly) never-ending curiousity and in-and-out woe over this sentimental loss. Indeed, I can relate in my own life, and having lost wallets returned to my actual door 2 if not 3 times in my life, know my "luck" is out. And don't worry, I have also lost a ring - a long ago senior year of high school one to train tracks. This piece was a journey.