The Birth of a Zen Mom

When I had babies in Virginia, the nursery was located on the second floor of our Cape Cod home, tucked under the eaves with an angled-dormer that looked out on the woods across the street and a double window that caught glimpses of tree tops and blue sky.

I’d sit exhausted and unkempt in the glider rocker, feeding or comforting the tiny bundle in my arms. I still remember the moist snuffling and warm breath on my neck, the impossibly silky feel of the baby’s head under my chin, the way my right hand could perfectly support the diapered bottom and my left hand hold a flannel blanket over the baby’s back.

As a new mom, I was always tired, often frazzled, and wondering if I was up to the task at hand, but in that chair I had those quiet, perfect moments that got me through all the rest.

With the whole world reminding me to “hold them close, they grow so fast,” I became nostalgic with each milestone. As my son became less and less interested in nursing, I knew I was no longer the center of his world. And the first time my baby girl took off on all fours up the stairs, she looked both scared and determined. It was all I could do not to sweep her back into the safety of my arms. Instead I watched her navigate the steps one by one, anxiety all over her face. When she got to the top, she turned around and delivered the biggest and most triumphant smile. She’d done it! She’d overcome her fears, left mom behind, and hit a whole new level! All that that meant wasn’t lost on me.

Early on, I definitely felt twinges of sadness as I saw my babies morph into toddlers and then enter preschool. While I sometimes felt smothered by their demands, I cried when I took my oldest to kindergarten, launching him into a larger world that didn’t include me. While their milestones and growth were easy to see and track, my personal growth was hidden and more subtle. The heat and pressure of parenting re-shaped my inner landscape over time, refined all my raw materials, created something new.

What a surprise to surface in my 40s and realize that we were really all growing up together. I was teaching them and they were teaching me. They were changing, developing, and maturing and so was I. The process wasn’t always smooth or comfortable or calm and linear. There was lots of crying involved (theirs and mine). Sometimes we slid backwards before we took a leap forward. It could be more than a little confusing and frustrating.

But once I realized we were all works in progress, I wasn’t inclined to look back. I stopped fearing the end of one phase and the beginning of another. I realized that while babies and toddlers could be fabulously cuddly and cute, preschoolers brought enthusiasm and excitement to the most mundane tasks, and elementary school kids are often wise beyond their years. I know we’ll take our lumps in adolescence and menopause will rattle our world, but as circumstances loosen my ties to my children, I’m learning to trust them, trust myself, and trust God to help us all grow into the people we’re intended to be--moment by moment.

© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

February 21, 2006

V-Grrrl Gets Stampin

I love art but have never been into crafts. Until now.

Shirl Grrrl, in a move that would make Amy the Mary Kay pusher proud, nonchalantly passed me her Stampin' Up supply catalog and idea book, and what can I say? I inhaled! The whole thing! Parked at the kitchen table with my tea mug steaming, I took hit after hit off the catalog’s pages.

I had never been remotely interested in Shirl’s rubber stamping hobby. I’d requested a catalog because I thought little E-Grrrl, my arts and crafts darling, might like some stamping supplies for Christmas. Once I had the catalog in hand though, everything changed. Who knew stamping could be so cool?

I loved all the different stamps. Edgy and artistic, contemporary and bold, classic and vintage images—there were stamps for every taste and mood. I had envisioned rubber stamping as a dead end road—a predictable trip to a one way destination artistically. Shirl Grrrl’s own work and the samples on the pages she sent me showed me how wrong I was.

The images could be manipulated and colored, layered and popped, embossed and watermarked. Various types of paper and card stock, pencils, pastels, inks, paints, and dimensionals and other add-ons created all sorts of possibilities. I loved the way the cards the artists created were rich with color and texture, could be started and finished in a single session, could be simple or complex.

Hovered over the catalog, I saw that stamping would give me the chance to express myself and get as creative with paper as I am with the words I put on it. Just like my writing, the cards could be personally tailored works of “art” meant to be given away. Oh sure, I ordered some stamps for little E-Grrrl, but I ordered a whole lot more for myself—along with cardstock, tools, and other supplies to get us both started.

Since then I’m like a crack addict and Shirl Grrrl is my supplier. Dare I confess I have a few hundred dollars invested? That I asked for stamping supplies for my birthday? That I bought two books on stamping from Amazon? That E-Grrrl and I can spend hours on a weekend afternoon working on designs? That I like to stamp at night after everyone else goes to bed? The ever-wise E-Man supports my addiction, afraid I might start to twitch and bitch if he cut me off now.

While just a beginner, I think my designs get better with each session. Last weekend I attended a workshop with other addicts  artists to learn some new coloring techniques and try out some different tools. Ooh baby, I love how that stipple brush gives an airbrushed look to pigment. And now I can add ribbon to my cards with ease.

Meanwhile my stamping experience has gotten me interested in scrapbooking. While I prefer photos in a simple album, I’m imagining all the creative ways I can present the postcards I collect on a page, layering them with subtle background images, textured papers, complimentary colors. Conveniently, Shirl Grrrl is also a scrapbooking supply dealer.

I know those Mary Kay wenches get pink Cadillacs when they’ve pimped enough products. I’m hoping Shirl Grrrl ends up behind the wheel of something even better. I’d like to see her behind the wheel of something fast and fun, stampin on the gas, leaving rubber on the road.

© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

February 20, 2006

It's my blog and I'll whine if I want to......

Tax time. A reminder that it’s been almost a year since I collected a paycheck. Working in Belgium is a complicated prospect for me. The Belgium government seeks to preserve its jobs for its own citizens and so for an expat to get a work permit and a job is a long, drawn out and difficult process. And at the end of that road are Belgian taxes, which I think are the highest in Europe.

I was talking to a fellow American recently about working. She and her husband had put a calculator to it and discovered she would have to earn 2,400 euros in a month before she’d actually take home 200 euros. So there’s not a lot of financial incentive to go through the whole work permit process only to lose most of my income to taxes—and then need a professional accountant to help navigate international tax returns.

Truthfully,  I wasn’t too eager to tie myself down to a job and pay for child care when we moved here. I wanted to be free to travel and explore and take advantage of my husband’s generous vacation days. For the first time, I had the opportunity to do what I’d always talked about doing: creative writing.

But six months after launching my blog, I’m wondering if that’s enough. I started blogging with the notion that I was doing this for myself, but I quickly became addicted to the idea of expanding my audience, finding a niche, delivering something meaningful or fun each day, and eventually generating income from my personal writing.

Earlier this week, I was doing some research for an article I’m writing for Mike on the Bottom and discovered there are currently 28 million bloggers online. GAH! Where do I really think I’m going with this? What do I have to offer and what can I expect to get back? My blog is like a lotto ticket in my pocket—a near impossible dream that I’m gambling on week in and week out.

Sometimes I feel diminished because I’m not pursuing a job or generating any income at home.  It raises my feminist hackles, and then I think I’m being a jerk for not accepting my good fortune. As I approach the end of my first year living abroad, I need to celebrate my freedom instead of indulging needless guilt. I’ve had the luxury of pursuing the creative life here—time to have hobbies, to travel, to write. I can’t let my inner Puritan or FemiNazi continue to pull my loose threads and unravel my satisfaction.

There are ways middle-age feels so liberating—in some respects I have so much confidence and a strong sense of myself. That’s what gave me the courage to leave all that was familiar behind and start over in a new country. And yet there are moments I feel as turbulent and insecure as an adolescent trying to find my place in the world, feelings that are probably exacerbated by the nature of expat life which makes me a perpetual outsider.

Life is GOOD. I sometimes wish I could drift through it with ease and not dissect it on every level.  Y’all probably wish that too.   Well, the joy of the blogosphere is that we’re all writing (and reading) our way to understanding or entertaining ourselves and others. Thanks for sharing the ride--but remember, it's my blog and I'll whine if I want to. Happy February.

Blogger Available: Will Travel

The big news in the blogosphere in February was the report that the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions (NBTC) was providing 25 top American bloggers with all-expense paid trips to Amsterdam, which include airfare, transportation passes, and a five-day stay at a five-star hotel. While the bloggers had to participate in one interview with Holland.com, the NBTC’s Web site, they were not required to write posts about the trip on their blogs.

The bloggers were required, however, to post NBTC ads on their site for one month as well as a link a disclosing the nature of the travel offer they received for one year.

Is this a deal or what?

And to think I have been writing travel copy on my blog for free since last August. Where was I when the all-expense paid trips were being given out?

Maybe I was riding a bus stuck behind a herd of cyclists in Tervuren  or standing in the dairy section of the grocery store trying to discern the differences among the multiple varieties of yogurt displayed. I could have been riding a Metro train in the wrong direction or on the phone with the plumber begging for more hot water. Perhaps I was chasing my umbrella down the street on a miserably windy day or shopping for rubber boots. My days are so varied and action-packed, it’s hard to say what scintillating activity may have kept me from grabbing the attention of the NBTC.

All I know is that while I missed the boat on the Amsterdam opportunity (or shall I say the train or plane), I don’t want to be overlooked again.

While the blogosphere is buzzing with debate over whether the American bloggers should have accepted the trips or not, I can tell you it’s not an issue I would lose sleep over. No, if someone offers me a first-class trip and premium accommodations, the last thing I’m going to ask myself is, “Should I go?” The first words out of my mouth will be “Where? When?”

Let the record show I’d be more than happy to pack my bags and my laptop and take my writing on the road. The line between journalists and bloggers may be blurring, but I don’t think anyone comes to V-Grrrl in the Middle and expects anything other than the opinion du jour. Give me some fresh experiences in a new setting (ahem, five-star hotels do sound grand) and I’ll deliver some polished prose (especially if my room has a fabulous tub).

While I can’t promise glowing reviews, I can guarantee authentic, straight from the mother keyboard, original V-Grrrl copy, delivered with a virtual smile. Sure, you can’t predict precisely what I’ll post, but having worked in public relations for close to 15 years, I can tell you I have a tendency to see the best in things. (Except the Eiffel Tower, of course. I was less than impressed with it, but the rest of Paris was lovely—really!)

All I need to do now to collect some free trips to European cities is to get the word out that I’m a blogger for hire! Maybe I could post something like a hybrid professional-personal ad. How’s this for catchy?

One smart chick

Who writes for kicks,

Would be happy

To write for trips.

V-Grrrl’s readers

May be world leaders.

Conference planners

Understand her.

Marketing types

Love what she writes.

So make her day

In a first-class way.

Ring her bells

With fine hotels.

Add her to

Your VIP list:

The traveling blogger

Who shouldn’t be missed.

© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

February 16, 2006

"It was a dark and stormy morning..."

Maybe it’s the relatively flat lay of the land or the way the geography channels the air moving off the North Sea, but when the winds picks up here, I feel like I’m playing a part in a gothic drama.

The wind truly howls and moans incessantly, an eerie braying wrapping around the walls of the house. The rain is lashing the windows and forcing me to look this ugly day in the face.

On my way home from walking the kids to the school bus this morning, the wind snatched my umbrella out of my hands and sent it cart wheeling down the street. I chugged after it like a brontosaurus lumbering after a hot-footed chihuahua, praying I wouldn’t get nailed by a driver in a speeding car startled by an unidentified flying object hurtling past the windshield. I managed to avoid becoming expat road kill, but by the time I dragged my sorry self home, my coat was wet, my pants soggy, and my spirits dampened as my shoes.

On Wednesday afternoons, I normally help teach writing to the second-graders in my daughter’s classroom. I don’t know if I’ll be able to face the trip to the school today.

Weather aside, I’ve had so many Charlie Brown moments with public transit lately.

Last week, coming down a side street to catch a bus, I saw it barrel past on the main road and leave me behind. It had arrived two minutes early, which meant I had to wait 30 minutes in 30-degreee weather for the next bus.

Two days later, chastened by my experience, I approached another bus stop on a busy street a full six minutes before the bus was due. Waiting on a corner for the light to change so I could safely cross the street and get to my stop, I saw the bus approaching from the right.  Gah!  Early again!  How is that POSSIBLE?

I watched in frustration as my bus pulled into the bus lane on the opposite side of the street. The light changed and I dashed across the street with a grocery bag bouncing against my leg, running like a cartoon character, waving my hand as the bus driver pulled back into traffic, oblivious to my plight.

Well I learned my lesson. The next time I had to catch a bus, I showed up at the bus stop a full 10 minutes early and was slapped down by the transit gods yet again when the bus appeared almost 15 minutes late. Lucky me. I spent 25 minutes shivering and jittering in freezing weather, waiting for a ride. And things only got worse.

Because the bus was late, I was delayed arriving for and returning from my doctor’s appointment. Scurrying into the Metro station in downtown Brussels on the way home, I heard a train coming in. Perfect timing! I ran full tilt down the station steps and hopped on the train in the nick of time. My relief turned into dismay five minutes later when I realized I was on the wrong train.

I had to get off at the next stop, cross over the tracks, catch the train back to my original station, get off again, then catch the correct train. The end result—I missed the bus that would take me home from the Metro station at my destination and had to wait an HOUR for the next one.

I didn’t cry, I didn’t cuss, but trust me, I’m nursing my wounds. With the rain blowing sideways outside today, I’m not sure I’m willing to play games with public transit—even for the noble cause of helping in E-Grrrl’s class.

Instead, I’m harboring childish fantasies, wishing I could pop open a magic umbrella like Mary Poppins and glide to a happy place with birds chirping and flowers blooming and a lovely park and carousel. It sure beats enduring another debilitating series of “Good grief, Charlie Brown!” moments.

Sigh.

February. Day 15. We’re more than half way through.

© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

February 15, 2006

Confessions of an Anti-Romantic

Melanhead tagged me to do the Perfect Partner meme, which is a list describing everything you love about your partner or, if you’re unattached, everything you want in a prospective partner.

I’d seen the meme at other sites--but I didn’t really want to do it.

And that made me wonder why I had an aversion to it. At first I thought it was because it seemed trite to try and wrap words around a relationship I’ve been in for 27 years. I couldn’t reduce why it worked into items on a list. Having been with the same person since I was seventeen, I can tell you the qualities that inspired me when I was a teenager aren’t necessarily the same ones that I’d place on a list now.

But on further examination (because hey, in V-Grrrl’s wrrrld, the unexamined life doesn’t exist), I realized there was a deeper reason for my reluctance to write about my “perfect partner.”

That reason is that I don’t believe in a “perfect partner.” I don’t believe in “soulmates.” I don’t believe in the whole concept of “one true love.” I’m quite an anti-romantic at heart.

But I do believe in love.

Years ago, my father-in-law, with a smug tone in his voice, implied I was forever indebted to him for adopting and bringing my Belgian-born husband to the States. If he hadn’t done that, he claimed, I never would have met my one true love. “And then where would you be?” he added.

“Married to someone else, I’m sure!” I replied with more than a little laughter bubbling up behind the words. Really, the question did strike me as absurd.

My father-in-law was completely flummoxed by my response. (We spent a lot of our relationship misunderstanding each other.)

My point was that I don’t believe E is my destiny, the only man in the universe I could ever fall in love with, marry, and be relatively happy with. Do I sound like I slut if I dare to say there are probably several men I could have loved and married with varying degrees of success? Sure, a different partner would have made a different life with different strengths and weaknesses—and perhaps different end results. After all, loving someone intensely in itself doesn’t guarantee a good marriage.

Being an anti-romantic and a practical Grrrl, I’m a big believer in compatibility, in marrying someone not just that you love, but that you can live with--really LIVE with--day in and day out, year in and year out. I tell my kids not to marry someone just because you love them: marry someone you can build a life with, who will let you remodel that life from time to time.

It’s easy enough to fall in love, staying in love is harder and far more important. Bit by bit over the years, nurturing love requires a commitment not to put your relationship on automatic pilot or cling to what you felt in the past but to get up every morning and make a decision to love the one you’re with and cultivate the relationship between you. It’s a type of long-term courtship.

I’m probably one of the few women in the Western world who hated the movie Titanic. I couldn’t stand the premise that Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio were soulmates united and divided by their drama on board the Titanic. I know I was supposed to cry at the thought that they each lost their one and only true love when Leo’s frosty face slipped under the waves.

Oh please.

They only loved each other for 36 hours! Loving someone for 36 hours doesn’t impress me—not even a little bit. I’m not sure I’d even use the word “love” to describe a 36-hour relationship. It was more like a really long, first (and last) date.

Here’s the flip side, a not-too-sentimental glimpse of what my 27-year-relationship means to me:

E, if you’re reading this, let me just say this: I’m glad I fell in love with you and you with me. I’m glad we chose each other and continue to choose each other, day in and day out, year in and year out.

We’ve grown together and grown apart. We’ve made each other laugh and made each other curse. We’ve shared the most romantic moments and also the most mundane tasks. We’ve shouldered many burdens together. We’ve held each other when everything was coming together and when everything was coming apart. We’ve offered one another comfort and acceptance on a level we could find no where else. And we’ve done that for a really long time, in the best and worst of circumstances.

So while I may not embrace the idea of a one and only “perfect partner,” I do believe in a (near) perfect partnership. I have had a wonderful life with you. Moment by moment, day by day, month by month, year by year, we’ve functioned with amazing grace.

Happy Valentines Day, E. This blog’s for you.

© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

February 14, 2006

Anatomy of a Yoga Babe

Little E-Grrrl asks me if we can do some yoga together, and so I set up the yoga mats and I pop in a DVD featuring lithe women doing yoga on a beautiful beach in Jamaica.

As E-Grrrl attempts some of the poses, she complains she isn’t flexible enough.

Looking at the green-eyed yoga goddess on the TV screen laying her head on the floor while sitting in a full straddle, E-Grrrl says with a mix of awe and disgust, “What is she made out of ? Play-Doh?!”

Corporate Giant Jolts My Cynical Nature

by Mike on the Bottom

Shocker: Apple has a heart.

On my way back from the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, my Laptop of Doom was stolen. This was the same laptop that nearly caused a TSA body cavity search at Dulles International Airport on my way to Vegas.

Anyway, I filed a report with the Las Vegas police, who are very nice and helpful. Las Vegas is an excellent place to get robbed.

Then I called our insurance agent. My claim included lost iTunes music stored on the laptop. I had failed to back up the downloaded music.

My insurance agent asked that I check with Apple and see if iTunes would replace the music free.

“SUUUURE they will,” I thought. “That’ll happen the same day an editor gets some compassion.”

So I emailed iTunes support.

Less than 24 hours later, I was stunned when iTunes support said yes and replaced my music free.

Wow.

Feel ... cynicism ... lifting. Faith ... in ... human ... race... growing.

I’m all warm and fuzzy, at least till the next idiot bumps into me, causes me to spill coffee on myself and doesn’t bother to say, “Excuse me.”

By the way, our 2-year-old, Jay, is listening to the song “Big Red Car” on my iPod right now.

“The Wiggles!” he just said. “Cool!”

Thanks, Jay. Your old man is hipper than you for at least a couple of more months.

Michael Zitz Beckham, aka Mike on the Bottom, is a journalist, baseball coach, father of two boys, and FOVG (friend of V-Grrrl).  She hopes the laptop of doom thief had to undergo a body cavity search in order to leave the airport, and that he arrived home only to discover he'd been robbed. Sometimes, life is fair.

Return of the Homesick Blues

Homesickness has been visiting in my house for a week or two now. It hadn’t dropped by since early November, and I wasn’t sure when it would once again darken my door. I think it slipped in the night E-Man carried in a big birthday care package from my Grrrl friends.

About ten of them gathered in the U.S. to celebrate my birthday a week ahead of time. They filmed the party, put together the package, and mailed it. In a miracle of international shipping, it arrived in time for me to enjoy at my birthday celebration at my home here in Belgium. Opening the box unleashed their love and good wishes—and called Homesickness back to the table.

Watching the video of Heather, Michelle, Joanna, Jan, Janis, Lisa, Stephanie, Beth, and Eileen made me long for my old neighborhood and the Grrrls’ Nights Out that we held in each others’ homes.

After seeing the Grrrls, I had to re-visit the Christmas card photos of the children that brought us all together. They are growing up, their round cheeks replaced by sculpted cheekbones, the neat white lines of baby teeth have been replaced by gap-toothed smiles. Some have filled out, some have trimmed down, hairstyles have changed, glasses appeared, and braces are on the horizon.

These are the babies we used to push in strollers through the shady streets of our neighborhood, the ones who needed help on the swings and someone to wait at the bottom of the slide, the ones who first entered the pool with swimmies on each arm and a reluctance to get their faces wet.

Now the playground swings and slides hold far less appeal, and in summer they spend their time in the pool treading water in the deep end, going off the diving board, and waiting for the life guard’s whistle. Even as we see our kids grow together and grow apart, the Grrrls have remained a unit.

In other parts of America, I have great-nieces and nephews that I have never seen (Madeline, Eric, Molly, Anthony, Kathryn) and others I haven’t seen in far too long (John, Meghan, Matthew, Stephen, and Alex). I hate that I’m missing the chance to connect to the next generation in my family, though admittedly, even when I lived in the States, we were separated by hundreds and hundreds of miles and rarely had a chance to visit.

Next month my niece Anne, a junior in high school and a talented musician, will be playing with an orchestra at New York City’s famous Carnegie Hall. She has an English horn solo during the William Tell Overture. How I wish I could be there to hear her play. Last summer she toured Europe playing oboe with another orchestra but never got close enough to Belgium for me to attend a performance.

Down in Florida, my mother-in-law lives with my sister-in-law’s family. Each year she spent a few weeks in our home, and it’s been more than a year since we saw her last. That’s such a long time. My children miss her, and we all are sad because though she is Belgian, she hasn’t visited Belgium in decades—and her health doesn’t allow her to visit us now.

E-Man is traveling to Virginia next month to pick up financial documents that are presently in storage but that we recently discovered we need to file our U.S. tax forms. He’ll be staying in our old home with the friends who are renting it now. While there he’ll tend to his beloved flower beds and prune the shrubs and trees, something our tenant, who has severe allergies, can’t do. And I’m sure he’ll crawl around in the attic to check the roof, slide under the house to make sure all’s well there, and attend to any maintenance issues before he flies down to Florida to see his mother. In a twist of fate, he’ll be flying back to Belgium on the first anniversary of the day we arrived here.

I so wish I could join him on this trip. I long to go home and retrace my steps, see our friends and family, bask in the sun shining through the windows of our house, get a bagel at my favorite coffee shop, go to the mall.

But my yearning to visit home is tinged with anxiety. How will it feel when I visit America? Will it make returning to Belgium difficult? Or will the thought of resuming our old life there seem less appealing?

We’re committed to staying here for three years but have the option of staying for five. The tug of war in our minds and hearts on when to leave is unrelenting. We discuss it nearly every day. We’re planted on two continents now with friends and family in both places, and somewhat complex career, financial, and educational issues to consider in whatever decision we make.

As I sit in Belgium this February entertaining Homesickness, I know we’re in the middle of a long-term relationship.

One gray day I’ll lean over my kitchen sink and gaze out the window in Virginia and let out a long sigh. “This reminds me of Belgium,” I’ll say. And then I’ll put on the kettle, join Homesickness at the table, and revisit the places and people I love.

© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.

Reflections on the Lure of All that Glitters

My friend Vicky is remarkably low maintenance. When she came to Europe for a three-week visit last summer, she and her husband each carried a large backpack with all that they’d need so they’d have no luggage to check.

I was impressed. Every time I think I’m embracing simple living I realize how little I really know about simple living. I told Vicky I wouldn’t even consider using a piece of luggage without wheels, let alone something I’d have to carry on my back. I’m just not that kind of Grrrl.

I was thinking about Vicky today because she doesn’t wear a wedding ring. Yes, she has an engagement ring and wedding band, but she no longer wears them or any rings for that matter. She just doesn’t like jewelry.

In the last few years, I’ve often left my own modest diamond engagement and wedding rings behind and substituted a silver ring or a Native American band that E-Man gave me in its place. Those rings don’t snag on things while I’m cleaning, handling laundry, wearing gloves, searching for a coin in my jeans’ pockets, or running my fingers through my hair. Here in Belgium, married women generally wear a simple band on their right hands, so leaving my diamond behind seemed even less of an issue.

But recently I was at a gathering with a large group of American women and was struck by the unbelievable number of stunning diamond rings among them. Diamonds so large and flashy, they looked more like headlights than rings. Diamonds that dominated petite fingers and demanded to be noticed and admired. Diamonds swathed in gold and framed with even more diamonds. And hey, I admit it, I was impressed.

Suddenly my silver claddagh ring from the Museum of Modern Art felt less artistic and personal and more, well, small and plain. Was its plainness a symbol of confidence, practicality, and simple living--or something else altogether? Why doesn’t my original yellow-gold wedding set with the round diamond in a Tiffany setting and a design of vines and flowers on the band appeal to me much anymore?

I remember picking it out 25 years ago and in a moment of prescience, confiding to a friend that it was hard to choose a ring knowing it would be a choice you’d live with every day for the rest of your life!

Choosing my husband was easier.

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, there are ads everywhere for diamond rings. I find myself lingering over the newspaper inserts, clicking on online ads, and admiring the chunky white gold settings with the square-shaped princess-cut stones. Hmmm, wouldn’t it be nice to plant a three-stone ring on my left hand or a modern design on my right hand and make a new statement?

And then I consider the prices and wonder how I could ever justify the purchase of a piece of jewelry worth thousands of dollars.

Then I remind myself what we’ve spent on computer equipment in the past, and how a diamond is forever and will be passed on to my daughter and maybe even a grandchild. The computers, however, will end up in a recycling bin sooner rather than later.

But I couldn’t live without the computer.

Clearly I can live without diamond rings.

Time for a new approach to my dilemma.

Ah yes, here’s one. We sold our extra cars when we moved and the one car we do have, we bought used from E’s mother. We have a 24-inch ancient TV—a hand-me down! We don’t have cable or TiVO or any of that! I don’t own an iPod, a Blackberry, a video camera, or even a real stereo system. So what’s the big deal about coveting a new ring?

Here’s the big deal: I read a daily devotional book, and the day’s entry is about being responsible stewards of all that God has given us. Aaargh! I don’t want spiritual TRUTH, not after I’ve carefully constructed a pile of fabulous rationalizations!

I immediately pull a blanket of guilt over my head for even entertaining the idea of buying a new ring. I wish I had sackcloth and ashes to finish humbling myself.

But then I peek out again, seduced by the thought of a sparkling new diamond winking at me from my own hand. Why do I feel so conflicted for admiring something that's undeniably beautiful.  Hey, I’m not being greedy, pretentious, or wasteful.

Or am I?

February 8, 2006