A Ring of Truth

As some of you know, I am dating my WW buddy Howard, who also happens to be my college sweetheart. After a 16-year silence and a 20-year gap in seeing one another, we each found ourselves looking the other one up in the earlier part of this year. He called me in early June, just a day before I had planned to call him. He got a job in Chicago, and I set him up with my realtor to find an apartment. He took me to dinner as a thank you. I invited him over to spend the evening with my son and me, and then Howard escorted us both on a tour of Elmhurst.

About a month after Howard moved to Chicago, we were still doing the Getting To Know You Again dance when I suggested we go to the Poetry Slam in Uptown. I couldn’t determine Howard’s interest in me, but I knew my interest in him, and I wanted to explore it. That morning, we’d had a long talk after the WW meeting (our first together), and we’d embraced upon parting. But was it just friendly? Certainly it could have been. I did not know.

I conceived of a game to help us pass the time on the drive into Chicago. Let’s talk about the things we’ve regretted, I told Howard. Let’s confess the things we’ve always wanted to say. My desire to hear everything that had happened to him in the silence of years that followed our break-up trumped all wish to be safe, or to move slowly, or to see if Howard had a plan of his own. It’s just the two of us in a moving car. We’re friends and WW buddies now. Let’s talk. Let’s share.

“I’ll start,” I told him. “I have a confession. We haven’t seen each other in twenty years, but I always knew where you were. I followed you via the public library, and then once I got internet access at home, I followed you on line. I lost you briefly when my son was born and you moved to Connecticut, but then I found you on LinkedIn. And then I found your blog.”

Howard nodded once, sending a glance in my direction. “Even though I’ve seen you and I know where you live, I’m still looking for you. I see a woman who resembles you, and I ask, ‘Is that Amy?’.”

On went the night. We watched a terrific poetry slam, we confessed to each other, and then, after ten hours together, we kissed for the first time in twenty years. From that moment on, we were together.

We had very little time together at first. We suffered through the weeks, willing the clock to race until we could be together on Sunday afternoons. We talked, we kissed, we shared, and though the span of half our lives had separated us, there was neither a hiccup nor a blip on the path back to each other. I have loved Howard all of my adult life, and he has loved me just the same.

Howard and I insisted we would move our relationship forward at a normal pace. We wanted it all, but we would take our time and savor every moment. Over the next few months, we talked through everything. Howard and I have so much history, but we’re different people from the twosome we were in college. This was a new relationship. As a new and budding love, it deserved the time and breathing space of any new affair.

Still, I’m a planner and a forward-thinker, and my brain kept jumping ahead to the future. How long does ‘normal pace’ take? What’s long enough before we can announce our intentions to others, so I can go shop for a dress? Howard and I were back, we were in love, and it was time to stop all the waiting and get on with it, already!

“We’ll get to all those things,” Howard told me. “First we walk.” All right, I told him. Walk it is. But don’t expect me to like it.

What I've realized after wasting 3 months sulking and trying (unsuccessfully) to guilt him into speeding up, is that I am right where I want to be. Whatever happens next, I’ll love it, and I’ll want it, and it will be right. But I wouldn’t give up today, or all these moments, for any of it. Those things will come in their time. For now, I love my man and I want to relish every day while we build the life we were always meant to have.

Still, I wanted something to symbolize our commitment to each other. Howard liked the idea, and so we started looking. We decided on rings, with one caveat. “They can’t be too wedding ring-y,” Howard cautioned. “If my folks see us wearing rings, they’ll assume we got married without inviting them.” Easy enough, I told him. We’ll get them for our right hands.

While we were at it, I suggested silver. With Howard perhaps 30 pounds away from goal and me even farther, I shrunk from making a commitment ‘around $600’ for something that I could only wear for a few months. We started looking, but we didn’t find much we liked. Then last Saturday, I was digging around in a drawer, and I found a braided silver ring. I pulled it out and looked it over.

“Try this on,” I suggested.

It fit perfectly. Howard wore it the rest of the day, and every time I looked at his hand, my heart swelled. Two days later, Howard announced at dinner that he wanted to keep it.

“It’s what I want,” he told me. “It’s yours, and it’s from you. I love it.”

The next week, we found the identical ring in my size. I’m wearing it now, and I can’t stop looking at my hand.

I’ve never been so happy to wear a ring, and I’ve never been so happy with the man who gave it to me. I love that it’s silver and that it’s on my right hand. It represents a passion and a peace that didn’t exist until my man returned to my life and made it so. This is our ring of love; our ring of truth.

First we walk. Happy to do it, my darling. Let’s walk hand in hand through every normal-paced and silver-lined day.

A the C(ommitted)