Lady Of The Rings

When I was pregnant with Wonderbaby, I lost my wedding ring. It was late in the pregnancy, and my fingers were swollen, so I removed it and (I thought) tucked it safely away, with every intention of putting it on a gold chain or something so that I could keep wearing it.

I never saw it again.

It was something that I had hoped never to lose. My mother had it - and my husband's matching band - handmade from gold from my great-grandmother's collection as her wedding gift to us. It was the only thing that I had of my great-grandmother's, and the most precious of our wedding gifts, not to mention, you know, the crafted symbol of our undying love. And I lost it.

I wore a cool Frank Gehry-designed Tiffany ring in its place until very recently. It - the Gehry ring - was explicitly not a conventional wedding band; it was just a pretty, shiny placeholder for the treasured ring that my husband kept assuring me we would find. When we moved house, shortly after Wonderbaby's second birthday - more than two years since I had lost the ring - we finally gave up looking. It was gone.

My husband bought me a replacement ring for Valentine's Day this year. It's very pretty, a simple white-gold band with a sparkly row of diamonds across the top. Conventionally wedding-bandy, without being too traditional, and evocative of the simple gold band that my mother had crafted for us. If you put my husband's left hand alongside my own and noticed our rings, you would think that they each had probably been purchased or made with the other in mind. That they weren't - that there are years and histories that divide these two rings - would only be apparent to someone who knew the saga of the ring that formerly dwelt upon my left ring-finger. Even then, they might not notice. A ring is a ring is ring, after all, and one band - whether it be treasured hand-me-down gold or jagged high-design silver or brand-new and sparkly - is not all that different from another.

A ring is a ring is a ring. And the loss of that first, most precious ring - the first piece of jewellry that I ever really treasured as something whose whole value was greater than the sum of its market-evaluated parts - taught me that what was precious was not the ring itself, but everything that it symbolized. Which, I know, trite, but still: I was able to lose that ring and not feel that I'd lost some part of myself. My marriage, my love for my husband, my mother's love for me, the memory of my great-grandmother: those were, and are, all things that live and breathe and flourish beyond the ring. These things cannot be lost.

Someday, I'll pass along my wedding ring - my shiny, pretty, circa-2008 ring - to my daughter, and I will tell her its story and I will tell her that it means everything - love, memory, loss - and nothing. That its importance - before it comes into her possession, while she carries it with her, and long after she loses it - resides only in its idea, in the thought of it as a symbol of all those things that I will tell her about, that she will learn about, and that that idea, that thought, those things, can be carried in her heart, their weight beyond gold.

I have no picture of that ring, and this was supposed to be a photo-centric post, so. In lieu of, I inserted pictures of some of my other favorite things. My antique Lopburi monkey oil painting, my library table, one of my two cats, a photo of my grandma on her wedding day, the squirrel who's been suntanning outside my kitchen window. You know, stuff I love.

None of which I love as much as this, though:

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As I noted yesterday, instead of a straight-up Friday Flashback, today is a kind of Friday Flashback/Friday Foto Frenzy combo - a photo-centric post that may or may not involve a flashback (although bonus points are awarded for keeping it flashback-y.) The topic: "My Favorite Thing," or "These Are A Few Of... etc" (in case you have more than one.) Self-explanatory: what object (or objects) in your home is your favorite thing, the thing that you would be most likely to grab first in a fire, the thing that you gaze upon and murmur, lovingly, MINE? Bonus points if it's something from your youth or childhood. (Inspiration from Mama Tulip, who was probably inspired by someone else, which is how this stuff usually works.) Let me know if you do it, so that I can come check your stuff out.

Other posts this morning (note - this list is NOT comprehensive - I'm limited in my capacity to update links these days, tho' I'll try to add more as I can, but anyhoo: this baby's round-robin, which means follow the links for more links and more links and so on and so forth):

Sweetney
Girl's Gone Child
OTJ
Mrs. Flinger
Whoorl
MuthaBumpa
Izzy

What A Girl Wants

Hey, I might be an aging pregnant woman who is totally run aground by her toddler, but still. I likes me my shoes some lots. Which is why when Guy Kawasaki recommended this spectacular object, I was all over it. Like, that very minute. Clicked the links, located a local source, hied me hence to purchase and then dragged it home for immediate enjoyment.

Whereupon Wonderbaby immediately used it to jail Dora, who has really been rousing the rabble lately and needed to be contained.


But it's actually for shoes. My shoes. Mah preshuss shoes...


And I've only put, like, a fraction of my collection in there. Can see them all! Can get at them all! Which, is irrelevant, given that my fat preggo feet don't fit them, but still! MAH SHOES! Have broken free from their back closet shoe-box lair and are now ART.

What can I say? LOVE.

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The Rakku - the Shoe Wheel From Heaven pictured above - is now one of my very favoritest things. But it's not my most favoritest thing. That, I will tell you about tomorrow. Tomorrow, instead of a straight-up Friday Flashback, we're doing a kind of Friday Flashback/Friday Foto Frenzy combo - a photo-centric post that may or may not involve a flashback (although bonus points are awarded for keeping it flashback-y.) The topic: "My Favorite Thing," or "These Are A Few Of... etc" (in case you have more than one.) Self-explanatory: what object (or objects) in your home (note: NOT child, pet or partner) is your favorite thing, the thing that you would be most likely to grab first in a fire, the thing that you gaze upon and murmur, lovingly, MINE? Bonus points if it's something from your youth or childhood. (Inspiration from Mama Tulip, who was probably inspired by someone else, which is how this stuff usually works.) Posts go up tomorrow!

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Thanks so much to everyone who put in their two cents about daycare vs. preschool vs. Montessori. Really, just so tremendously helpful. Enough to help us decide that the Montessori we visited might NOT be the one for Wonderbaby.

You all rock. But you knew that.

To Montessori, Or Not To Montessori

That is the question. Among others.

Wonderbaby - who is now, admittedly, more of a Wondergirl, even if I can't bring myself to call her that - is 28 months old. Soon, she'll be old enough to attend the well-regarded Montessori preschool that is just around the corner from our home. Which means that she would leave the lovely daycare to which we have all become well-attached in the three months that we have lived here, and move on to a more regimented, learning-focussed environment, when she is just shy of three years old.

She's been pretty happy in her daycare, which she attends three days a week. But she's a little ways beyond the other children her own age in speech and movement and general activity, and so - with our permission - she was moved into a higher age group where she could move beyond the things that she'd already mastered and not run circles around the other children in the room. And so far, it's been fine, but my heart does ache, just a little bit, when I see her in there with all the bigger children, her tiny self asserting her dominion in whatever corner she has staked out, defying anyone bigger to treat her as smaller, and I wonder, could we - should we - do better with this? Place her in an environment where she's not necessarily the smallest or the youngest (or, conversely, where she is not, by whomever's standards, the smartest or the fastest), but where activities are tailored more to her specific needs?

(There's a whole other post here, waiting to be written and filled with heartache and confusion, about how to do what is best by my spirited little dictator - how to adequately provide the stimulation and learning that she thrives upon while still allowing her to be the wee child that she is. I never, ever want to smother her with concerns about maximizing her potential or aspiring to whatever excellence I think she might attain or like nonsense - and I do think that it's nonsense for parents to pressure their children, especially their small children, toward such things - but neither do I want to close off opportunities for her, nor do I want her to become bored or enervated. All of which is to say - my questions here have far less to with 'what is best for her development' and everything to do with 'what is best for her soul?')

Her daycare is very good about early learning and engages children, within their respective age groups, in activities that are designed to stimulate their curiosity and facilitate interest in words and numbers and science and craft and whatnot. I think that it's more than adequate as a preparation for 'real' school later on. But then again, Wonderbaby's 'skipping a grade' - in freaking nursery school - concerns me. Is keeping her with older children the answer? Or do I need to be seeking out a program that is more suited to her, as she is, at her age? And might that program be Montessori?

We've visited the Montessori school around the corner. It was very impressive. But it was so markedly unlike her - noisy, chaotic, bright, messy, playful - daycare that it was almost disconcerting: quiet (although clearly happy and engaged) children busy with quiet activity, all in coded dress (nothing extreme, just variations on navy blue and white kiddy ensembles) and all seeming more mature than their three-plus years. More mature in many of the ways that Wonderbaby is herself already 'more mature' - studiedly reflective and tending toward extremely close engagement with tasks at hand - but also more, I don't know, mature in that mini-adult kind of way that spooks me when I see it in her, and makes me worry about the possibility of squashing, even just a little, the silly, free-spirited child that she is at her core.

And I just don't know enough about these things, and it's a lack of knowledge that weighs upon me as a lack that I cannot afford. Might Montessori be the right choice for her? Will her daycare suffice? Is 'sufficing' sufficient? How am I to know what's best for her, what's truly best for her, both the child that she is and the full person that she's in the process of becoming?

Anyone out there have some advice, personal perspective, personal experience with Montessori, personal experience with other early-education systems, general sympathies and/or - most importantly - reassurances that I am not the only mother out there who worries about not always knowing what is best for her child?

B To The Bunny

It's not quite Holly Hobbie in the do-rag, but still. Wonderbaby's determination to re-style her toys more street is, I am choosing to believe, evidence of advanced creative flair and a steeze cred that far exceeds my own. And in any case, it gives Easter a little different flava, and I'm pretty sure that Jesus would totally approve. He was down in the 'hood, for realz. Until he went all up to the Big Daddy's 'hood (word to the Holy Ghost, yo), that is, which I guess is what we're celebrating today, and which has nothing to do with bunnies, pimp-styled or not.

Happy Easter.