HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

#63 :: Wedding Ring

Words and a picture won't do this justice. So, bare facts: On April 9, 1994, an extraordinary woman said yes to me and put this on my finger.

Today, 10 years later precisely, to the very minute (4:49 p.m. on 04/09/04) she called me just as I was reaching for the handset to call her, and asked breathlessly, "What time is it? I don't have my watch." The woman who has slept with me in tents and beds, on couches and floors, who understands that the great bat swarm of Carlsbad Caverns exits the cave mouth every night to hunt at the rate of 5,000 bats per minute. Who went with me to Moab, Manila, Manhattan, Guangzho, Beijing, Acoma and the Great Salt Lake. The one who brought our extraordinary children into the world and made them funny and loving, who is sick for chocolate chips, art nouveau, Will Smith and the desert - and the one who tangoed with me 10 years ago tonight, until our feet hurt too much (I trod on her, unable to handle half a glass of champagne) and we switched into gym socks and Chucks, she in white, me in black, and danced some more while our friends, full of Filipino food and good cheer, caroused around us. The ring is something I designed, of white gold with a single sapphire. It bears the same inscription as hers - inpsired by our love of numerological symmetry and Little America. It says, 4:49 and, for the name of an obscure, but progressively-named little town in Mississippi that we once passed through, "ONWARD." I took it off and put it into her hand for these photos. I very rarely take it off. It is heavy and, if dropped but once, could roll somewhere very far out of reach, so I keep it tight around my finger.