I Melted Down My Grandmother's Ring for My Daughter's 21st

Twenty-one years and four hours ago, the howling stopped. I had just given birth to Ava.

The windows were open, sweat pouring off me, two midwives and one thoughtful husband in the room. We were new to the neighborhood in Providence, and somewhere between contractions I worried that my neighbors — all doctors and lawyers — would think my husband was beating me. I was screaming that loudly. I wondered if they'd call the police and have the midwives arrested. Home births were illegal in Rhode Island in 2005.

Ava arrived to a scene of full drama at 3:34am on June 28th.

Home births are messy, and I don't recommend them — but Ava's APGAR score was perfect, and I felt almost as good as dead. Once I'd counted all ten fingers and ten toes, I let go. In the hours that followed, my husband went down to tend the garden beneath my window. Pinks and purples, blossoming for the arrival of his daughter.

All was well, until it wasn't. Postpartum depression and acute anxiety thrashed through my body. I didn't feel quite like myself for longer than I'm comfortable admitting, even now. It's unbelievable what we endure. Isn't it?

Time moves fast, and also slowly, and then all at once. Ava is 21. And this fall, I turn 52. Where did it go?

She's Me 2.0

So today is a celebration for both of us. I'll say it with my whole heart: Ava is me 2.0. She's taller than me, smarter than me, prettier than me, and often funnier than me — though not always, lol. I love it. I celebrate her daily, not just today.

This feels like a miracle, given the intergenerational trauma between mothers and daughters in my family.

The Thorn That Skips Generations

My mother was never really a fan of mine. Maybe she's not to blame. Her own mother never really liked her. And her mother never really liked her, either — that would be my great-grandmother, who was put on a ship to America alone at sixteen to escape the pogroms in 1800s Ukraine. All alone.

Deep down, I believe her own mother didn't love her. Who sends a daughter away like that? Let's be honest — no modern mother would send a sixteen-year-old to a Drake concert by herself, let alone to the new world with no one to protect her.

This thing between mothers and daughters runs through my family like a physical trait, the way you can spot the Kennedy jaw clear across a room. But you can't see it. It's more like a thorn — hidden, festering.

Strangely, for us it skips generations. I was close to my maternal grandmother. Ava is close to my mother. My mother was close to my great-grandmother. And I can't stop wondering: who was there to protect my great-grandmother, the one who was sent away? Her name is almost lost to history.

My Grandmother's Ring

When Ava got her period at thirteen, I gave her a piece of jewelry. I don't even remember what it was — nothing precious in value — but it marked the milestone with something beautiful, and she was happy. (It never hurts to wrap the idea of bleeding unexpectedly every month for the next forty years in a little sparkle.)

Today, Ava gets a piece of jewelry too. So do I. Let me explain.

When I was about to get engaged, I asked my grandmother if I could have her ring. In her thick Boston accent, she said, "You can have it when I'm dead." I took that as a no. And because she'd never written it down anywhere, when she did die, a relative carried the ring out of state and disemboweled it — prying out the gems, leaving only two specks of diamond and ruby, and shipping the heavy platinum carcass back to my mother.

My mother, trying to make something so wrong a little more right, had the ring rebuilt. For that, I thank her. She took those tiny remaining stones — ten specks of dust, all told, tucked into an envelope — replaced all four with larger, finer ones, and gave the ring to me.

Sister Pendants

For today, the ring has been melted down again — this time into Ava's gift, and mine.

The chunky platinum was reformed into two pendants that echo the shape of my wedding ring, a very basic Ted Muehling design dipped in gold. The four stones, divided between us. Ava's pendant holds the diamonds, because she likes a little bling. Mine holds the rubies. Maybe that's fitting — I paid for all of this in blood. Sister pendants.

Master goldsmith Carolyn Wyman, here in Newport, made them. A friend, and a dear person. She crafted them knowing this whole story, which makes them even more magical. And one of the very tiniest stones — a diamond that had been lost for seven years — surfaced just this week. I brought it to Carolyn and said, "Please set this one on the back of my pendant. It's the original. From my grandmother's ring."

Last Wednesday, almost without my noticing, was the worst day I'd had in ages. I was beyond aggravated. Carolyn came to my studio in Newport, we chatted for a bit, and then she pulled out the two pendants — and I started to cry. I cried for joy. I cried in thanks. I cried because, of all the days, that was the one I really could have used a gift.

As I write this, in a few hours Ava and I will sit in a quiet corner of our yard, facing the pond. I have two little shopping bags, one for her and one for me. Inside each, a tissue-wrapped pouch. Inside that, a pendant on a long gold chain — long enough to rest on CV 15, the point just below the sternum that, in Chinese medicine, is one of the most important places in the whole body for healing the heart.

People ask me what I'm most proud of. It's this. Four generations of women who couldn't quite love their daughters, and then — Ava. Somewhere in the line, the thorn stopped being handed down. This afternoon, we'll sit by the pond, each of us with a pendant warming over the heart, and I'll feel the whole long chain of us, finally, go quiet.