I think it may have been coolmom who asked for a photo of our rings (and please forgive me if I am mixing people up here — so many welcome greetings have come our way this week, that I have trouble remembering some details). Here it is:
There's a backstory, of course. We bought the rings in 2012, when we took a kind of retreat-vacation to Santa Fe. We have actually had a version of this ring featuring turquoise from New Mexico for some years now. We bought similar rings in North Carolina when we began teaching at Belmont Abbey College in 1991 (and, yes, the rings featured in the dismal story of our eventual firing by that Catholic college).
In North Carolina, we had them inscribed with St. Augustine's phrase (borrowed from Horace and ultimately from Plato) noting that each of us has, in the world, someone who is the other half of our soul. We took the Latin phrase animae dimidium meae and had the rings inscribed with it.
Down the road, a piece fell out of Steve's ring (yes, he's one of the Steves from Monday, hrh), and so when we went to Santa Fe in 2012, we decided to see if we could find a replacement for it. As we asked around, we found ourselves directed to a wonderful woman who is a native American silversmith, and who works with turquoise that is quarried on her own tribal lands. She told us that the version of the rings we had was now somewhat obsolete, and offered to make new ones that were similar to our old ones, but more stylish.
And so she did. Those are the rings you see in the photo above, which we used for the wedding. The silversmith also told us that if we ever had a marriage ceremony (though we had not told her we were a couple), she'd like to make similar rings for us out of mother of pearl.
Why the fortune cookie sayings? After we ran home on Monday following the wedding to see to the dogs' comfort, we went out for a celebratory Chinese lunch, and that's what we found inside our cookies. I got the short stranger with blessings to share cookie, and am still waiting to see who or what this promise will be all about.
The bandaid is there on my finger because I can't seem to iron a batch of shirts and pants without managing to iron at least one finger at the same time.
Here's another photo—Steve (my Steve, hrh) congratulating our friends Steve Thomas and Allan Cox right after Judge Wendell Griffen married them on Monday:
And, finally, this embarrassing (because I find most photos of myself embarrassing!) picture is one that Marcus Rachard snapped right after Judge Griffen married Steve and me (the one I just shared is Marcus's too), as we joked about the fact that, in all of Steve's many photos of his German-American Catholic ancestors marrying, the bride always stands beside her seated husband, with a wreath of flowers on her hair.
And so we wondered why we hadn't thought to bring a wreath of flowers, and that is what has me grinning that big old undignified grin:
Thanks for indulging me as I share these photos.
