Day 29. Shine on you crazy diamond (29/1/19)

(Soundtrack: Van Morrison. 'Summertime in England' from the 'Common One' album. For many reasons. And because it's great.)

J found her engagement ring this morning.

I was woken at 7 (after curiously waking up from the latest in a long line of very detailed, very specific dreams with subplots and subtexts and everything, at exactly 4:44am; got to be a message in that somewhere) by J saying "look what I've found."

Glistening, shining, looking as pure and wonderful as the first night that I put it on her finger (Christmas Eve 1987, lovely Italian restaurant, slightly drunk on champagne, 'Fairytale of New York' probably playing somewhere at some point).

It's been lost for about a year, and we thought we'd seen the last of it. A disappearance, a mystery.

After J lost her lovely mum, she switched from wearing her own engagement ring to wearing her mum's. You need that link, that contact, that connection. And she put her own ring safely to one side.

And then, one day, a few months later, she looked to put it on. And it was gone. It wasn't where it had been, it wasn't where it should be.

There was searching. Draws were pulled out, make up boxes, jewellery boxes, shoe boxes, all searched. The bed was looked under. Everything that was under the bed was pulled out. Come on, that's not just us. Rooms that the ring would never be in were turned upside down to demonstrate that the ring wasn't there. Cupboards scoured. The dressing table was pulled from its location. It's a heavy dressing table. It was looked behind, under, around. And it wasn't there.

"It's okay, it'll turn up, it can't just vanish."

That's me, being the voice of reason.

But it still didn't show up.

Until today.

J's looking in an underwear drawer. A drawer that's been looked in, specifically and non specifically, many a time across that period. And there's this box. A Tiffany box because that's how we roll in our house ;)

And in this box are three rings. One of them being the long missing engagement ring.

A box that hadn't been seen in a drawer that had been checked.

Nothing is ever lost. Everything that's mislaid will come back to you when the time is right.

That's your moral.

That, and this:

"It ain't why, why, why, it just is."

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