The momentum for spring cleaning came a little late this year. But the dust waited for me, growing in its anticipation of a brisk bath. Although I had no agenda that the kids would join me, they did. The twins tidied up shoe mountains, and Ben organized the silverware. He cares deeply about segregation when it comes to spoons and forks. Zack tackled the game closet which was no game. Among the Clue Jr and Operation was an old jewelry box. It did not open easily but we have watched enough spy shows to know about bobby pins in locks.
My mother lost almost everything in the floods that invaded her apartment building. There were a few books and pictures to divvy up. But here somehow was a box of her jewelry that had escaped my detection for seven years. That says something about my homemaking skills. But I wonder. She kept mostly to her apartment. Why would a jewelry box have snuck upstairs to a closet bursting with incomplete decks of cards and Yahtzee?
Before you start salivating about gold and diamonds let me assure you that her shopping venue was mostly thrift stores. I was not surprised to see junk like strings of plastic pearls and the kind of earrings that make your lobes thinner as the night progresses. And redder. I untangled a few strands as I thought about her, and got misty with the image of what kind of jewels she is wearing now. Surely my father was waiting for her with something dazzling. Then I noticed a set of rings in the tangle of chains. It was a triplet of silver bands, just like the ones John and I wear from the workshop at the Marriage Conference. How was this even possible?
Because I have so few tangible items from her the ones that remain are precious. I have no idea if this one is of value to a silversmith, but it is to me. I slipped it on the same finger that wears my own set, so they can catch up with each other.
The woman who teaches the jewelry class in which lucky people get to make them is brilliant. She takes complete novices and in the course of two hours they bang, solder and shine silver into submission. The three rings are interlocking with no sign of how they ended or began. It is marvelous to see the joy of their makers.
The rings represent the triplet of marriage... husband, wife and God. They make a tinkling sound when you play with them, which is inevitable.
My parent's marriage had a lot of junk. They could not even share the same coast for the last years of their lives. He lived in Arizona and she stayed in Pennsylvania. Maybe she begged him to move back. Probably she begged him. But his boundaries were set.
Yet in the end the junk didn't matter much. If you looked for it, there was a triplet of commitment tangled up inside... Larry, Marjorie and God.
It is marvelous to glimpse the joy of their Maker.
