Dear mom,
Remember when you got your ruby bracelet? I watched you pine for it for what seemed like years. You visited it weekly to make payments, and when you finally brought it home, you were gleaming. It was beautiful, I thought, and no one should have it but you. No one deserved that kind of beauty but you.
I thought it was just a bracelet... Just a ruby tennis bracelet. Your cousin Loraine wears three or four of them pretty casually--all with diamonds--but I always liked yours best. I watched you admire it, inspect the glistening gold and deep red stones. Most people think they're garnet, you'd tell me, but they're very rare rubies. Then you started to cry. You told me that you bought the bracelet because of the Bible verse that says a virtuous woman's worth is greater rubies.
I cried, too.
Remember when you lost that bracelet? I was crushed. I said you'd find it, but you didn't believe me. Told me that you were no longer a virtuous woman.
I found it after a few days, presented it proudly to you. You were wearing it when you told us about him. A married man. Ex-marine. Met him at work. Yes, Dad knows. I remember staring at those blood red stones as my heart broke. As my world tuned upside down.
And I thought about those rare rubies for weeks after, dangling from your wrist as I watched you leave. And I think about them now and wonder what they mean to you. You still wear them, but you don't tell people about the Bible verse anymore.
I'm not sad I found your bracelet. Or that you seem to have lost the pride you once had in wearing it.
I just wonder why you lost it in the first place.
