7 tales of treasures lost — and regained

Devastated and desperate, they surveyed the ruins

Until finally they found that precious vial of pure olive oil

Bringing hope and light to these battle-worn warriors

7 tales of treasures lost — and regained

Diamond's Promise

Chevy Newman

I can vividly remember the last time I saw my diamond ring.

The ring was worth over $13,000, so I wasn’t keen on wearing it everywhere all the time. I remember how I twisted it off my finger and placed it on the seforim shrank, right next to our little container of keys and coins and odds and ends. Why? Was I about to wash for bread? Was I going to start bath time? That part of the story remains fuzzy, and the five years that have passed since then have done little to sharpen the memory. I never saw my ring again.

The ring was special for its beauty and its significance. But above all, I felt reassured by the security its financial value provided. We had one son. I imagined that one day, it would be his yerushah.

I knew I probably would never own another piece of jewelry like it.

And now it was gone. That hurt.

In desperation I contacted neighbors, friends, and random acquaintances. Has anybody seen my ring? My cleaning help offered her assistance as well, asking pointed questions about the ring and its worth. But the following week she disappeared as well, and her phone number was disconnected. Her abandonment left a bitter taste in my mouth. I had treated her so well; could she really have betrayed me so deeply? To this day, I prefer to leave her involvement a question mark. Maybe she ran into immigration issues and had to leave suddenly. Maybe she was urgently called back home. I will never really know.

And yet… There were still so many questions, so much frustration and pain. Thirteen. Thousand. Dollars. How? Where? Why?

Four days after I lost the ring, we found out that I was expecting our second child. Our joy knew no bounds; our gratitude overflowed. Every child is truly a brachah, but with our medical history, having a sibling for our bechor was not something we’d taken for granted.

The exhaustion of early pregnancy was sprinkled with regret about my ring. My husband grimly placed an order for a CZ replacement while I restocked my prenatals. Our joyous secret grew while our hope for finding the ring faded.

But we were okay. The ring wasn’t all that important. We had been gifted something far beyond our dreams in its stead; we were rich and blessed. True, the two occurrences had happened at the same time, but that was a fluke; they were unconnected.

Late one night, when the first flush of joy and wonder at our news had begun to calm, and the frustration of losing the ring had diminished somewhat, my husband shared an ironic observation. One child, one yerushah ring; that’s simple enough. But two children, one ring? Maybe there was a hidden gift here….

My boys have since grown into the most handsome and adorable little men around. They play hard, and fight harder, and I delight in their very existence. But on the days when the rough and tumble gets just a little too tough for my liking, I catch sight of the CZ stone winking up at me from its place on my finger. Two little boys and a recipe for shalom. Could a mother get any luckier than that?