On top of the world

Back in February of this year Eric and I went to Hawaii.  While we were there, he gave me his wedding ring to hold while he went swimming and I held on to it for the rest of that day.

I'm embarrassed to tell you what happened next, but obviously not embarrassed enough, because I'm going to tell you that story now:

I was wearing his ring on my thumb and I forgot all about it... until I got in the water and felt it slide off my finger.
Noooooo!

I felt sick at the moment and hoped it didn't portend something ominous about the future of our marriage. And I cried disconsolately right there on crowded Waikiki Beach.  The ring!  His wedding band!  Blessed and full of promise.... okay, maybe I got a little dramatic, but still...

Of course, once we got back to our regular life, neither one of us thought much about The Wedding Ring Debacle of Waikiki Beach.   And life just kept happening and we went about the everyday stuff that makes up our days.  But every now and then one of us would bring it up in an "oh, yeah" sort of way.

As in, "Oh, yeah, we really should go find a wedding ring soon..."

It became a task on the to-do list that kept getting pushed down because neither one of us felt the urgency to go on a ring hunt.  Except for those moments when I'd see his naked left hand and it made me feel weird, but I'd quickly shake it off as not having any consequence.

But this past weekend, on our way to L.A., "Getting a ring for Eric" made its way to the top of the list.
We stopped at a jeweler that he serendipitously met in Laguna Beach while he was getting tickets for the Pageant of the Masters for our wedding anniversary, but that's not important right now - or is it?

And yesterday when we drove to the very top of Mulholland Drive and we could see all of L.A. and the Valley laid out before us because the winds had picked up and it was an unusually clear day, he said he'd marry me all over again. (sniff, sniff)

I know.
It was just like in those wedding ring ads, which I usually think are really cheesy, but in this case, because of all the latent guilt I had been carrying from having lost his wedding ring in the first place and all, I got a little emotional and said I would too. 

Okay, so you know I'm a little superstitious and now that he's wearing a ring again I feel a huge weight of worry lifted from my shoulders.

We took this picture from the top of Mulholland (that's the famous Hollywood sign on the hill behind us) and I kept hearing the lyric from that old song in my head and I thought, yes, it feels like that's true:

"On a clear day, you can see forever."  (Shut up. sniff, sniff)