# The Second Ring It's a beautiful sunny autumn day a month or so ago, and I'm outside, raking the front yard. There are so many leaves that I really don’t need to create piles — the whole yard is already a pile. Beyond a certain density in leaves, raking consists more in creating vacancies than in gathering piles. I'm lifting another armful of leaves into the bag when a vision flashes before me, a vision of disaster. These visions happen to me often, usually while I'm driving, usually involving a car accident. It's a glimpse ten or twenty seconds into the future: a picture of my car slamming into another while switching lanes, bouncing off a guardrail and into a drainage pond. One of us is horribly injured, or dies. This time, however, the vision is not of a car accident. I see bag after bag of leaves emptied and scattered all over the lawn and driveway, the destruction of many hours of effort. I see myself frantically sifting through the leaves, doubting myself, sifting through them again, then emptying another bag. Just as quickly, I snap out of it. None of it has happened yet. Grateful as always for the warning, I take my gold wedding ring off my left hand, and the silver celtic one off of my right, and place them carefully, consciously behind a flower pot on the porch. * * * The fearful vision I'd just had, of having my wedding ring slip off my hand into a bag of leaves, was not an idle fear. For one, it could happen *very* easily. My hands were cold and just a little numbed; and my knuckles are kind of knobby, which means any ring big enough to slide past the knuckle all the way to the base of my finger is going to slide around a little loosely once it gets there. With my fingers shrunken and numbed from cold and low circulation the ring could very easily slip off while I'm packing the leaves down into the bag, and I might not notice it for awhile. But it wasn't just that. It had actually happened, once. I lost my wedding ring. * * * We were on our honeymoon in Key West, it was a beautiful, scalding hot day in April, and we had ridden our bikes across the island to the beach at Fort Taylor. Now, I don't remember exactly what we were doing just prior to the disaster. But I remember that I was swimming, and I intended to head towards shore and dry off for a bit. Maybe Trixie had just gotten out and was already walking on the sand towards our towels. I do remember I couldn't just stand up and walk out of the water — too easy, too uninteresting. I had to amuse her somehow, get her attention and make her laugh (I still have not outgrown this impulse). So decided to do the dead man's float: lie on my stomach and go completely limp, with my arms at my sides, and just let the ocean waves drag me towards the sand and eventually dump me there. Whether or not she laughed, I don't remember. The gag had the disadvantage of positioning me so that I would be unable to hear or see any effect it might have had. But I do remember it wasn't long before I felt the sand press up against my chest as the waves pushed me into the last band of shallow water, and soon I came to rest there, still lying on my stomach, still with my arms tucked back at my sides: the waves flowed up and around me, and then washed back again. As I lay there, suddenly I had the *strangest* feeling. Just as a wave was receding, I had this sensation, it was just as if my swim trunks had been pulled off. I felt exposed and mildly panicky. I quickly reached around, and then stood up — no, nothing had happened. My swim trunks were still right where they were supposed to be. Just like that, the feeling was gone: I looked to see if Trixie had noticed me, whether I'd made her laugh — and thought nothing more of it. Later — fifteen minutes, maybe? an hour? I looked at my left hand and it was bare, no ring in sight. I spent hours that day digging for the ring, and twice over the next few days I returned with a rented metal detector, but the ring was lost. And believe me, I know the internet is full of happy stories of freelance and hobbyist treasure hunters finding people's lost rings at beaches and returning them to their owners; I left messages at several message boards that are decicated to that very purpose; but I never did hear back, and I never expect to. * * * The following quote is from *Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell* — you've seen it at bookstores, the thick novel with the raven on the cover. > Mr. Norrell was speaking. "Many magicians," he said, steepling his hands, "have attempted to confine magical powers in some physical object. It is not a difficult operation and the object can be any thing the magician wishes. Trees, jewels, books, bullets, hats have all been employed for this purpose at one time or another." Mr Norrell frowned hard at his fingertips. "By placing some of his power in whatever object he chuses, the magician hopes to make himself secure from those wanings of power, which are the inevitable resut of illness and old age. I myself have often been severely tempted to do it: my own skills can be quite overturned by a heavy cold or a bad sore throat. Yet after careful consideration I have concluded that such divisions of power are most ill-advised. Let us examine the case of rings. Rings have long been considered peculiarly suitable for this sort of magic by virtue of their small size. A man may keep a ring continually on his finger for years without exciting the smallest comment — which would not be the case if he shewed the same attachment to a book or a pebble — and yet there is scarcely a magician in history who, having once committed some of his skill and power to a magic ring, did not somehow lose that ring and was put to a world of trouble to get it back again." * * * The author was making an obvious but great nod there to the Lord of the Rings. It's delightful to think that among the rare volumes in Mr. Norrell's library at Hurtfew was an ancient copy of the Red Book of Westmarch, which in the Tolkien legendarium was the posthumous title of Bilbo Baggins's original manuscript. Maybe in Susanna Clarke's mind, the Red Book had somehow survived into the 19th century and imparted to Mr. Norrell some of his knowledge of magic rings; maybe she even liked to imagine that this was the same copy that later came into J. R. R. Tolkien's possession. Anyhow, this is an excellent example of how myth symbolises things that are real to our experience. We actually do invest ourselves in certain objects; the more sentimental you are, the more of yourself you tend to put into certain things — to the point where, when that thing is lost, you pretty much have no choice but to move mountains to get it back again. My wedding ring, for example; quite aside from the fact that it was somewhat expensive, it was *the* ring you see in our wedding photos, the ring over which we spoke our vows in that old stone church. No other thing can really replace that connection, not in the same way. We do this with lots of things other than rings, as Mr. Norrel said, even commonplace things: with trees, books, jewels, bullets and hats. A good winter hat given to me by a friend and left behind in a restaurant has been the cause of hours of consternation and backtracking. And sometimes, when I look down into the crib early in the morning and see our little four-month old Sylvia sleeping deeply and brushing the back of her head with her fingers, I realize how much of ourselves we have placed in this little person: the great and terrible risk we have taken. Although she was sad my ring was gone, Trixie never once judged or criticised me for losing it as she very well could have. When we accepted that we'd never see it again, she simply said she'd buy me another one, which cost her the rest of her savings. It isn't the same ring she gave me in our ceremony, so that link is irretrievably lost. But this second ring has become something else: it's wearable ounce of pure forgiveness, given completely, without any strings attached and without a second thought, after I made a big mistake; and a reminder to me not to think too much of myself, or to traffic in the shame of other people, however much it may seem deserved. * * * Thanks for listening to Howell Creek Radio — I'm Joel Dueck. You can point your computer or mobile device to [`howellcreekradio.com`][hcr] to comment on this episode or read the show notes and links. On the site I'll include more information about the first ring, and a few words on the regrettable incident wherein I actually, believe it or not, lost my ring a second time (there was a happy ending to that one, though). At `howellcreekradio.com` you can easily subscribe to this podcast using iTunes, email or RSS so that you can automatically pick up new episodes as they are beamed from our unlicensed radio station deep within the Superior National Forest. Follow us and get in touch on Facebook and on Twitter. Howell Creek Radio has no sponsors. The text of this podcast is released under the [Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution International license][ccai]. ## Synopsis Radio address for December 14, 2013. We tend to place a bit of our power into things: trees, books, jewels, bullets and hats. Lose one of these talismans, and you are put to a world of trouble to get it back again. I never really thought I'd write about the experience of losing my wedding ring, but the time seems to have come when I can talk about it reasonably. Not long after it happened, encouraged by stories such as this one, I tried [posting on some treasure hunting boards][tsn], and a couple of people said they'd look but ultimately I never heard back. *The **second** loss (not talked about in the audio):* As mentioned at the tail end of the episode, there was another time when I actually lost my *second* ring too: it went missing for a few months. One day my mom shows up at my door with the ring: it had been found under their piano, looking like this: My ring, as found: squished The jeweler was able to restore it to its original condition, and in the process reduce it by a half size, making it a little less likely that I'll ever have to live through this again. This address's extremely appropriate and well-placed music cues are: * [*The Blue World*][tbw] from *Lady in the Water* by James Newton Howard * [*Wow*][wow], from *Finding Nemo*, by Thomas Neumann * [*Treasure*][trs], from *Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy* by Alberto Inglesias — *"…those wanings of power, which are the inevitable result of old age…"* * …blended seamlessly into [*One Ring to Rule Them All*][ortr], from *Fellowship Of The Ring*, by Howard Shore * and ending with [*The Grey Havens*][tgh], also by Howard Shore, from *The Return of the King* [tbw]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000V8EBSI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000V8EBSI&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [wow]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013AIRE2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0013AIRE2&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [trs]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005ZBY3LG/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B005ZBY3LG&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [ortr]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BNI90O/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000BNI90O&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [tgh]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0018AKC0Y/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0018AKC0Y&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [tsn]: http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/beach-shallow-water/241793-lost-men-s-wedding-ring-key-west-fl.html [hcr]: howellcreekradio.com [ccai]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en_US