With This Ring

It is official - I am really truly divorced now.

I sold my wedding band and engagement ring this week.

I shopped them around to a few local jewelers. With gold prices at a relative high, it was good opportunity to sell them to help pay for holiday gifts. Why the hell not. They were doing no good in my jewelry box.

I felt ever so slightly disembodied as I handed the ring to each jeweler to appraise. I remember the joy and anticipation of the original purchase. A good friend of my now-ex was a jeweler just opening his own shop in the Boston Jeweler's Building. He took the train home with a pocket full of diamonds and came to our home and let us pick out the gems. I wanted a double banded engagement ring with a diamond that we were assured was of the highest quality. And a wedding band studded with smaller diamonds.

The first jeweler peered at the larger diamond and implied it was neither 14 carat nor a real diamond. "I find that hard to believe, although anything is possible," I scoffed. After some hemming and hawing he relented that it was indeed real gold and diamonds, but he went on about how it wasn't a very good diamond and wasn't worth much. He offered a low-ball price that sent me scurrying from his shop.

The next experience was better. They offered me 30% more than the first guy and didn't try to tell me it wasn't real. Although even at this price, it was much less than half the original purchase price from 20 years ago.

They gave me a check on the spot. Morbidly curious, I asked what they would do with the diamond, lying helplessly on the black velvet surface of the jewelry counter (the ring, not me). "Take it apart, melt down the gold and resell the diamond. Probably match it up with another diamond for a nice pair of earrings."

It was hard not to feel a twinge after hearing that. What bride, mother or girlfriend can imagine THAT history of half a pair of stunning half-carat earrings.

I deposited the check on my way back to work and forgot about it.

But today as I balanced my checkbook in Quicken, a conundrum. The deposit needed to be categorized. It wasn't payroll, freelance income or a bonus.

I issued a credit to myself for "gifts given."