The soft pinging and ringing sound might have gone unnoticed, were it not for the fact that I happened to look down to see my wedding ring bouncing along the smooth sloped stone. Startled, I picked it up and put it back on my left ring finger.
It was then that I felt the smooth skin between my middle and index finger of my right hand where I should have felt my mother's rings resting.
What happened by this beautiful desert oasis, found after an intense hike through the southern Arizona desert, is still tying my thoughts in quantum bends. I must record it, and then maybe I can lay the conundrum to rest for a while in my heart and mind.
I stood stupefied for several long minutes, almost in a state of shock. My mother's rings were not on my right hand. My mom, just deceased in the spring; it would be a terrible loss and a horrible outcome of what had so far been a fun and an invigorating morning.
This hike had been planned for weeks: a family outing with my husband's kin who grew up in the Southwest. The trail we were using was through national park land, but started on private property that the family was familiar with, their grand parents having owned some property up to the park boundary in the foothills at the base of alpine-high mountains. The property long since sold, we passed through on the permission of old family friends.
Five of us - along with myself, my husband, his brother and two cousins - were all anxious to get up and into the desert mountains. We had a goal. A friend of one my cousin-in-law's had told him about some Native American petroglyphs this friend had once stumbled upon near one of the first saddles up towards the peak. The directions were a little vague, but all of us had already been to a shallow cave along the same trail with other petroglyphs in past years, so we knew that some already existed. None of us had - surprisingly - seen these specific hidden drawings before.
The cousin set a brusque pace. After a couple of hours charging up the mountain and then bouldering around the area looking for the elusive landmarks, a couple of us were winded, not the least myself (a little too much early celebrating the night before). We decided to head for what appeared to be a small canyon and hope for a nice spot to eat sandwiches and chill out for a while.
The outcome was not disappointing. Only off trail for, perhaps, 30 minutes we found a beautiful deep pool below a tall natural drainage path from the mountains.
It was lovely and could have been enough, but one of the cousins had already climbed up to a second level roughly 70 feet above us and reported a second pool. Though tired just a few minutes before, I had new energy and wanted to explore. I soon made my way up towards the higher pool.
Once there, I lingered in the sun, waiting for R__ to make his way down to join the others. The water looked dark, but clear and cool. I was hot and tired - a cool dip sounded renewing.
And in the process of disrobing, all my rings managed to fly off my fingers. Smoothly, effortlessly... I didn't even feel it; just heard that soft tinkling of the gold and silvers rings pinging along the stone to alert me.
For the first stunned moments, I wondered if what had transpired was that my wedding ring had been pulled off somehow by pulling my tank top over my head; but perhaps my mother's rings remained safe back at our guest room in my mother-in-law's house. I clearly recalled contemplating whether I should even wear these rings on such a remote hike. At that moment by the pool, I rationalized that maybe I hadn't even worn my mother's rings. It just seemed too incredulous that they would all come off my hands simultaneously.
But if I had worn my own wedding ring, chances were high that I slipped my mother's engagement ring and then wedding band - not fused - on my right hand. I would have felt safe in doing so because my rings were clinging tight on my fingers in the Southwest due to all the heat and activity. I had to practically jam them over my knuckle in the morning; and pull them hard over soaped fingers to get them off at night. They felt like an appendage.
But my shocked brain had started to convince myself that my mothers rings were tucked into a glass on the guest room dresser. At the exact second I decided to give up, calm down, and get in the pool my eyes rested on my mother's engagement ring - sitting there at the base of my feet, just as I started to walk towards the pool.
It sat there on the stone almost as a reproof for stopping my search. Relief washed over me. The engagement ring was the ring I associated most with my mother: twin stones - a diamond and a ruby - entwined together on a band of silver.
The wedding band - a simple circle of silver with a slight peak - was still missing. I walked around for a few more minutes without spotting even a glint, then decided I needed that dip. I would search for it after a swim while I dried off in the sun.
Several minutes later after a dip in the super-chilled pool, I was still looking.
While I was looking my mind worked around the puzzle of how they all came off my fingers and the way the event continued to unfold: the immediate sighting of my own wedding ring; my eyes alighting on Mom's engagement ring right as I stopped looking like it was a big, warm gift; and now the missing wedding band.
My mom kept the engagement ring in a her jewelry box the last few years of her life. But she wore the wedding band until her dying day. She had a happy marriage with my father (who was safe and sound back at home with my own family for Thanksgiving week). My mother loved my father dearly.
I had pulled that wedding band off of my mother's stiff finger at my father's behest before the morticians wheeled my mother's body out of my parents' home at 3am the day she died.
I wore it because I thought I should wear it, but it wasn't my ring. It would sometimes spin restlessly on my right finger where the engagement ring encircled my right index finger comfortably.
This place that had seemingly swallowed my ring was peaceful, transcendent. It was nestled at the base of mountains in a state park, in a hard to find place, apparently near Native American remnants. Perhaps events had transpired the way they were meant to transpire.
Mom was not a religious person, but she was spiritual. Probably the closest belief system to her own would be the New Age spirituality of the 1960's (though she was an Eisenhower generation, not a Baby Boomer).
I started dressing and said out loud. "I will look one last time to see if you want to be found." I walked around slowly scanning the ground and the edge of the pool, found nothing; and then purposefully made my way down towards my husband: my lover; and my in-laws: my friends.
Raised Catholic (Dad's doing), I lost my religion a long time ago. Agnostic now, my heart has resisted any temptation towards the spiritual. An avid reader of pop science - especially of the quantum variety - I have felt for the last twenty years that everything must and can have a scientific explanation. I have mused more that once this week that I should put on the clothes I was wearing that day to try to recreate the action of being able to pull all my rings off the two hands at the same time.
And yet... this experience has tested my resolve. This ring rests in a place that my mother would have deeply appreciated.
Though the loss of the ring felt like a new rending of the wound of my mother's death upon my return home - she was a kind and beautiful person, an ideal mother in so many ways - I also feel that it is exactly what was meant to happen. It was as if a force unknown to me blew it off my finger... and gifted the other two rings back to me as an appreciation for leaving it behind.
I'll never know what really happened. But now the ring rests in a tranquil place much like a sprinkling of her ashes. We are both at peace.
The Upper Pool.
Sat Dec 01, 2012 at 2:27 PM PT: Update: Thank you for all the warm, insightful comments, everyone. MAE