Grandpa's Ring

Time to pass it on

It’s time to let loose of these rings. And the question: who might I be for someone else as he was for me. The indelible legacies, not the fake ones, the supposed-to-be, colleagues and such, but the real, maybe the only ones. And it was enough.

Grandpa’s Ring

In the portion Vayetzei, G*d says to Jacob, I am Hashem the G*d of Abraham your father (Gen.28:13). Hello. Isaac is Jacob’s father.

First grandchild, I carry my Grandfather’s name: Stone.

When I pass a window or glance at a mirror, I see him. It’s a pleasant glimpse because Art Stone was a charismatic, magical personality. He had gifts. I look just like him, even I see it.

He loved his life and the people in it. In the last episode he sold shoes in a mall department store outside Detroit.

He died driving home from that job. I was in rabbinic school. After his death, my Grandmother slipped me the one item that spoke to me about him. The only possession, the one thing, that I recognized as indelibly him. He was not a person of things.

It was a ring he wore. He wasn’t a flashy guy, that he wore a ring at all was uncharacteristic. But he wore this ring. He probably purchased it as a young man in the Twenties of the last century.

It was gold and the setting consisted of two jewels, a diamond and a ruby. They are set in different planes so to speak, so depending how you look at it the diamond ascends or the ruby ascends. I link the diamond with clarity, intellection, and the ruby with passion, emotion.

About fifteen years ago, I took off the ring because I was playing hand drums at the synagogue and I left the ring in my jacket pocket. In those days I parked in front of my palatial estate and I ran across the front forty to get out of my car and into my house, and some time between when I removed the ring and several days later – I lost the ring. I figured it was either by my car, or somewhere across the lawn between the car and my house, or inside the front room of my palatial estate. Or at the synagogue where I took it off. I searched all these places.

I looked for almost ten years. Big mystery. It was the one thing I owned that is irreplaceable, that and my Father’s typewriter. It was gone.

My son is a gemologist and during the time of the ring’s exile, he said I can make you a new one.

I had given up finding it. So he designed one, found two nice stones from different locations around the world, and built a version. It was larger than my Grandfather’s ring, I am larger than my Grandfather, it actually fit my hand better I suppose and it was lovely. A similar design, that two-is-one effect, hendiadys in stones, two elements one in ascent and one in descent depending how one looks at it.

On days I was too much up in my head, I wore the ring with passion (ruby) ascending, and days when my passions might get ahold of me, I turned it the other way ‘round and the diamond’s clarity ascended. That worked as well with the new version as the old.

Almost ten years after I lost my Grandfather’s ring, we were doing some work on the front forty of the palatial estate and it was all tore up. I had taken a lunchtime gig at a new venue in town reading poetry from my first book. Just before the gig, I was running across the front yard of my house holding a bag in each hand from the grocery store. I paused half way up the yard, I had no reason to pause but I stopped cold in my tracks, looked down.

Set into a mound of upturned dirt, just at the place where I stopped and looked down, was the circular outline of what I recognized was a ring. I picked it out of the dirt. My Grandfather’s ring.

I took the groceries inside, washed out the ring, stuck it on my finger and hustled over to the gig. I could hardly speak. I had a story about a ring banging about my head but I was scheduled to read from my book. I spent half the allotted hour telling the story of the ring and showing it around the room.

I think I framed the story as a message from the past, from my Grandfather specifically. A love message. Hey Jimmy, good for you for making that book. I’m with you in these things and everything else you do, but especially in these acts of imagination. Use your skills, you probably got a lot of them from me. I’ve been with you then and I’m with you now. I’ve been with you the whole trip.

There is no now and then, and here is my ring to remind you of that. I’m with you. My ring your ring my life your life, we are all in this together. You and me and after you, we are all together.

Heck there is no me and you. The ring doesn’t belong to you. It’s yours for a while. Take care of it.

And when you’re done -- pass it on.