Not long ago, while working at a small bookstore in Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, I met the girl I will soon marry. She worked in the
café nestled off in the corner of the store, and I spent
days pining away for her without ever getting up the courage to
actually float a single word her way. My stubborn pledge never to
drink coffee only further complicated matters. After a few weeks of
this, I had an unusual stroke of luck when she walked up to buy a
book at my register. I tried to make small talk about her purchase,
a Hebrew dictionary. "Ah, you're learning Hebrew," I offered
pathetically. She nodded, before adding, "I'm moving to Israel next
week ..."
So things don't always quite work out the way we plan, and
Catherine flew away. But I didn't forget her, and in her own good
time she returned from the biblical land of Judea and we went about
the business of falling in love. We soon discovered it was not a
minor sort of love, and decided we better quit living in sin and
get hitched.
Somewhere between "Will you?" and "I do" comes the engagement
ring. We decided to shop for it together because we're both smart
enough to know I would have screwed it up otherwise. I have to
admit, I never understood the concept of assigning even a pretty
rock so much worth. Sure, a diamond is beautiful and it is forever,
as we are told incessantly by subway ads and television
commercials. But if beauty alone satisfied, I could get her a cubic
zirconium the size of the Hope Diamond for thirty dollars. And so
what if a diamond is forever? I'm not forever. She's not forever.
Why should the ring be?
A diamond looks like any other rock until it is cut at certain
angles to "produce maximum brilliance" and "fire." This is the kind
of folklore you learn when dealing with jewelers, a breed of human
being so dubious in character that they actually bring to light the
virtues of used car salesmen.
Here's the modus operandi: The jeweler smiles and
shakes out several glittery stones onto a piece of black cloth. The
stones all look the same, but seem to have been priced by a
paranoid schizophrenic, sans any rhyme or reason. I look
over at Catherine, the love of my life, to smirk and roll my eyes,
but she is hypnotized by this evil jeweler's magic stones. I
challenge the ostentatious, greasy young man. "I don't see any
difference," I say. "Of course you don't," he replies, producing a
funny little head dress with magnifying glasses for eyes. Catherine
puts it on, and the jeweler begins walking her through microscopic
imperfections in the stones. When I try to point out that neither
we, nor any of our friends or family, have superhuman vision, and
thus maybe we could just get some sort of "average human being"
bargain stone, the jeweler says solemnly, "But surely you want
something nice." I have to hand it to him. The guy knows
his game.
A day or two after we put money down on a ring, Catherine
learned that her mother wanted to give us the engagement ring of
Catherine's grandmother, Ruthie, who had recently passed away. The
next day we put the kibosh on the fancy diamond we had ordered and
instead had Ruthie's diamond set in a band along with a couple of
smaller diamonds on both sides. Of course, by the time that worm
jeweler got finished cleaning and setting it, the damn thing cost
as much as a brand new ring. But that was all secondary. We had
something unique and meaningful, even if it might not be something
that stands up under the harsh purview of magnified eyes.
And this is why I'll gladly spend the rest of my life with this
woman. She is able to recognize the diamond in the rough, or at
least ignore the rough in the diamond. Likewise, she is able to
overlook all the things I muss up, all the imperfections that cloud
my life. I'd overlook her imperfections, if I truly believed she
had any.
topics:
Television, Business, Books, Israel
