“When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.”
I was ten when I first heard about the magic ring. Mom and I were spending the afternoon at Grand Mum’s. She’s my mom’s mom. They were talking, and I was playing with Stephanie. She’s my Barbie, and she had just gotten home from work. I removed her business suit and dressed her in black jeans and a bright-yellow blouse. I was barefoot, so I let Stephanie be barefoot too. While I brushed her hair, she told me about her rotten day at the office.
“You wouldn’t believe what Mr. Davidson did today,” she said.
I bobbed my head in time with her words and made sympathetic noises as she told me about her boss. When she’d poured it all out, I told her my day had been no picnic. I patted her head and started to fix her a drink like Mom does for Dad when he comes home from work. It was then I heard the hushed tones grownups use when they don’t wish to be overheard by children.
“What ring?” I said.
They exchanged looks. “When you’re older,” Mom said.
I’d heard that line all my life. I looked at Grand Mum. She shook her head, smiled, and repeated Mom’s words. I could have whined, as I usually did to get my way, but I didn’t. There was something in Grand Mum’s eyes. Something that told me I was a party to their secret, but it was a secret I couldn’t yet understand. So, Stephanie dropped into her recliner, and I fixed her a bourbon on the rocks.
Time, and the aspects of growing up, dimmed all thought of the ring until the evening of my sixteenth birthday. That night Mom came to my bedroom carrying a small metal box. She closed the door before crossing to my bed and sitting at my side. Mom and I had always hugged, but that night she hugged me for an eternity—or so it seemed at the time.
I knew the best presents were always opened last, but in my opinion, Mom was pushing it. My birthday party had ended hours earlier. No matter. I grinned and said, “Another present?”
Mom wiped her eyes. “Yes. A very special one.”
Special? I loved presents—-special or otherwise. I asked to see it.
“In a moment,” she said. “First, I must tell you the story that goes with it.”
Oh, Boy! I just knew Mom was building up to one of her birds-and-bees lectures. Without a doubt the box contained a diaphragm, a prescription for the pill, and a lifetime supply of condoms. “Mom, I’m sixteen. I’m not a baby. I know all about, you know, boys and stuff.”
She gave me another hug. “I want to talk to you about that too,” she said, “but this is different.”
Different? I scooted closer to her side.
“This box belonged to a great grandmother of ours. Her name was Danica.” Mom cradled the box on her lap and brushed her fingertips over its hammered-bronze finish. She appeared to be wrestling with an invisible force when she continued. “This grandmother from our past was not an American, she was a Romani born near Bucharest in 1855.”
Romanies were nomadic, non-Christian, and their lifestyle was looked down upon as unorthodox by the Christian Church. I knew that much from taking world history in high school. On the other hand, Mom, Grand Mum, and I were Christian and often attended church together. Was it this contrast between our faith and Great Grandmother Danica’s lack of it that was now troubling Mom? To the chance that it was, I said, “Mom, children have no say in where they are born.”
“Yes, but her place of birth was only a part of a larger problem.”
“I don’t understand.”
Mom shifted the bronze box on her lap. “It’s that she was raised in a culture far different than what we deal with today.”
“Like what? No TV? No Internet or email?”
Mom ignored my attempt at humor as she continued. “Much of the Romani lifestyle and culture in Danica’s time still persists today. One aspect of it was that any female not married by her fifteenth birthday was shunned by society and even her own family. Danica reached fifteen with no man in her life.”
I thought of the dorky boys at South Central High School. There wasn’t one I could name who could talk with a girl without staring at her boobs. “Lucky girl.”
“Lucky for you,” Mom said, “but not so lucky for Danica. She needed immediate help, and to get it she went to a gypsy.”
“A real gypsy?”
“Very real. The gypsy placed a ring on the third finger of Danica’s right hand. She was told not to remove the ring or to tell anyone where it came from. If she obeyed, a man would ask for her hand before the next new moon. She would marry him, but on her wedding night she must remove the ring and place it into this box. Her first born would be a daughter.”
Mom paused and stared at the box.
“Then what?”
“Then,” she said, “when that daughter became a young woman, Danica was to explain the power of the ring and pass it on to her.”
“You’re putting me on, Mom.”
“Wait until I’m finished before you make up your mind.”
“So, what happened?”
“Before the next new moon, a Norseman, Vestar Sutherland, asked for her hand. That Danica had not married among her own by age fifteen was incredible. That she would marry someone outside her own was unthinkable.”
“So, she married the guy?”
“Oh, yes. They had several children, but their first born was Ericka.”
Mom opened the box. I saw a small, leather-bound book and a wide-band ring. The ring looked heavy and crudely made. It did not look magical. “What’s in the book?”
Mom placed it on my lap. “This was Danica’s diary,” she said.
I opened it. The handwriting was flowing loops and swirls and elegant to a fault, but I couldn’t read a word of it. “What language is this?”
“Romanian, but as you’ll see, Erika’s daughter, Denise, came to the United States around the turn of the century. Her entries, and all entries thereafter, are in English.”
I flipped through the pages. “Grand Mum’s name is in here! And so is . . . yours?” I paused and looked at Mom. “You wore the ring?”
Her face drained and her eyes began to water. In a whisper she said, “Yes, and the decision to do so has troubled me in the years since.”
I sat quietly alongside Mom and tried to imagine the discomfort she’d felt. What would I have done?
She brushed the backs of her hands over her eyes and gave me a weak smile. “I had dated and fallen in love with your father two years before he proposed marriage. During that time I prayed again and again that he felt as I did. But, in a moment of weakness, instead of standing on faith and the power of prayer, I wore the ring.”
Again, I wondered, what would I have done? With this unanswered question still in mind, I looked back at the diary and turned another page. “Oh, no! My name’s here too.”
“You’re my first born. But you also now know the history of Danica’s ring.”
I kept the box under my pillow for several nights before putting it in my hope chest alongside Stephanie. I figured she had as much use for the magic ring as I did.
That evening was eight years ago, and a few things have changed.
I opened my hope chest and reached for the tiny box. It was still sitting next to Stephanie. Both looked well despite their years of confinement. I carried the box to my desk, removed the diary, and read again through the entries of those who preceded the page bearing my name. Except for Danica and her daughter, whose entries were in Romanian, the approximate age and the reasoning expressed in each woman’s entry were essentially the same. That is, by their late teens they had found the love of their life and were hoping the ring’s power would ensure the union they deeply wanted.
These repetitive entries had not fully made sense when first reviewed when I was sixteen. I’d told mom I already knew about boys and stuff. In truth, though, my only experience with love had been the immature feeling best known as puppy love.
The items before me on the desk were my King James Bible, the ring Danica had first worn, and her diary now opened to the page bearing my name. Currently, I was a senior at Florida State University, 24 years of age, home on spring break, and, for the last two years, I’d been dating someone I genuinely cared for. Mom had held place in a similar situation concerning my dad. When she had told me about this, I wondered what I would have done in her place.
Spring break was now over, and I’d return to campus tomorrow. Soon thereafter I would graduate with my degree in accounting. Was marriage in my future? If so, would I have children of my own? Or, would I move on and find place in the business world? Another glance at my desktop gave the clear answer I sought.
I pulled Danica’s diary closer and picked up my pen.
Dearest Danica,
These words will never reach you, yet I feel a duty to append the final entry to your diary. I harbor no disrespect of you, your use of the ring, or for any of those who followed in your wake. I admit to desires for my life, but unlike you and those others, my path to all future things will be guided by the supreme power of our Lord as promised in Proverbs 3:6 “In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct thy paths.”
With understanding love,
Evelina
A divine feeling of comfort embraced me as I returned the ring and Danica’s diary to the small metal box and replaced it in my hope chest alongside Stephanie. What prompted this special feeling? I believed 1 Corinthians 13:11 explained it well.
“When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.”
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