Wearing of the green

Happy St. Patrick's Day, though it's not so much a saintly day anymore.

It's tradition to wear something green. My ex-husband and I liked to joke that I'd wear my emerald ring on St. Patrick's Day, which I did. It's a ring that I bought myself when it caught my eye on the way to work. I bought it in the bottom level of shops in the World Trade Center.

I really loved that ring. It was a flower shape, with 7 petals each an exquisite color emerald. The center was a perfect little diamond.

Well, I divorced in 1993 but my friends all knew the joke of my "wearing of the green (ring)" on St. Patrick's Day, so the wry humor continued each year until 1999. In February of 1999 my house was burglarized while I was at work and all my valuable jewelry stolen, including not only that ring, but the ring that belonged to my dead father. My poor old dog was traumatized and hurt but thankfully not killed.

I thought about that ring when the World Trade Center fell.

And I think about it on St. Patrick's Day. And how now I could not even afford the ring box to put it in, say nothing of a ring like that one. And my father's ring is irreplacable; one that belonged to my mother was also stolen. The only valuable jewelry not taken, but fingered, were the crosses and crucifixes.