It was only stuff, but...

It was only stuff, but,

* It was the small gold ring with a tiny sapphire that my dad brought back from his trip to California when I was around 8 or 9. I loved that ring and wore it everywhere. I felt so grown up wearing it and telling everyone that "it was a REAL sapphire." I lost that ring once, playing in the field across my house. It was getting dark and I was throwing a ball with a neighbor friend when the ring flew off my finger. We ran to my house and asked for a flashlight, telling my mom that we were playing flashlight tag. When I couldn't find it, I had to confess to my mistake. My mom went out the next morning in a drizzling rain and lo and behold found it. 

*It was the costume pearl necklace I found in my Grandma Ballengee's jewelry box after she died. I wore it to her funeral and afterwards restrung the pearls and placed a new clasp on the ends. I bought a few other pearl necklaces here and there, but the color and shape of those pearls remained my favorite to this day. 

* It was the ring I contemplated for weeks, with the date 2003 on the side of the peridot stone. I knew I was supposed to pick my birth stone, but I just loved the light green of peridot. I don't even remember what I had placed on the ring, but I was so excited to wear something signifying the end of my high school career. 

* It was the pearls that my Uncle Bob had shucked out of oysters on MY first trip to California. We came home and turned those two pearls into earrings with pretty sapphire "jackets" on the back. I wore those earrings until the studs fell off of them, only to keep the pearls in the jewelry box. 

* It was the gold chain my Grandpa Estep entrusted me to. The one that was my Grandma's. The one that I put in that jewelry box for safe keeping. 

* It was the ring that Dillon gave me one cold night in December at a stop sign in between our houses, telling me that it wasn't an engagement ring just yet... a promise if you will, that one day we would be married. The ring, that a few years later, he would steal back from me to have a special name engraved inside because we were too poor to buy a new ring. The one he carried in his pocket to the park, and got down on one knee and presented to me with the question "Will you marry me?" The ring, that my finger outgrew as my belly expanded and never quite fit the same. The reason why it was in that jewelry box. 

It was all just "stuff" in that jewelry box that was stolen today when someone picked our back door lock, came in and felt free to take what they wanted. The electronics & camera, they can all be replaced, but the jewelry is gone with the person who encroached our home and our safety and all that's left are the memories that were attached.