Even

I am on chapter 3 of this book which is, “Raising Grateful Kids.”

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Kaplan references Billy Collins, a former US poet laureate. She talks about his poem, “The Lanyard.”

Once the poem was referenced, I had to stop reading and retrieve it so I could read it because I was not familiar with it. I thought I would read it on my own but I found video evidence of it where Billy Collins reads it himself. Hearing him read his words, I thought back to an orange ring. A ring that Sean gave to me so many years ago.

I think Sean was about four or five years old at the time. We had met my parents at Senate Coney Island close to our apartment. I had given Sean a dollar (4 quarters) to buy something in the machines at the door. I don’t remember the other things he came back to the table with but I’m sure it was a temporary tattoo or a superball or something.

He had gotten an orange plastic ring. It was for me. Because I have small hands, this child’s toy ring fit me so I put it on the ring finger of my right hand.

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I kept that ring on until it broke when Sean and I were living in our house so he had to be about 10.

My students would constantly ask about it through the years. My students thought that orange was my favorite color because being that the ring was neon orange, it didn’t go with anything I normally wore but I wore it every day! I never took it off!

I remember one time being out to dinner with a friend shortly after I started wearing it and he asked, “The deal with the orange ring.” I remember looking down at my right hand, smiling, and telling him that Sean had given it to me. I told him that whenever any man would give me a ring that cost half of all of the money he has in the entire world, I was obliged to wear it I would happily wear it!

One night, I was in bed when I realized that it had fallen off of my finger. I gasped and looked at my bare right hand! My Mom laughed at me and said that I was acting as if it was a huge diamond ring. It was even BETTER than a diamond! It was in the kitchen sink because it had fallen off of my finger while I did the dishes that evening. My Mom got it for me so I went to bed happy.

As Sean got older, he asked me why I still wore that ring and I told him it was because it was from him! I didn’t mind that it was orange. I loved it because Sean gave it to me. In his little mind, he thought to use two of the four quarters that he was given to get jewelry for me! What a great kid?! I was making copies in the office copier after school one day when the ring broke. I was completely aghast! At that point, I had been wearing it for five or six years.

Because the ring was a $.50 ring made of plastic, I couldn’t repair it. The machine at that Coney Island where he got it from five or six years earlier was no longer at the restaurant. I still have the broken ring in my room, in the small jewelry box Sean made for me in kindergarten.

I cried as I read that section of the book, I am not even finished with it because I had to stop reading because I needed to blow my nose because I was crying so much and the, “Green leopard print” had become too dark on the pages of my book. I cried because that orange ring definitely made Sean and I, “Even” in Billy Collins’ words and more importatantly, in my book!