I looked at two apartments and chose the cheaper one. For the first month it was the efficiency, then I could move to a three-bedroom apartment downstairs. I borrowed my dad�s big, dual-tanked, four-door Chevy and started tossing junk out to burn. Then I started packing the things I could not live without in the little efficiency. The rest had to stay until I moved to the other apartment. The last walk through the house a month later took me an hour. I kept thinking I was going to leave something important, but I couldn�t see anything I would miss. It wasn�t until a few weeks later that I realized I had left something irreplaceable.
My grandfather had decided the family needed a sort of heirloom to tie us together. I think he knew we were pretty makeshift. He did some research on his surname, �Bennett,� and found that it came from Scotland. Further research told him that the family crest contained a lion. So, he started the tradition of everyone wearing a lion-head ring. We all had something different, to exemplify our individual tastes. Mine, of course, was the only silver one. I hated yellow gold and refused to wear it, no matter how many arguments Grandma and I had. We found me a sterling silver lion-head at the pawn-shop. The ring itself had no stamp of maker, only the little �925� stamp that signifies sterling silver. It looked as if it had been resized a few times, but it fit me perfectly and the sleek feel was nice on my finger. I loved it and what it stood for.
I had had a little, semi-raw garnet for years, one of my first, given to me by my grandparents. The garnet is my birthstone and my second-favorite stone. Kept in a little glass vial on top of my dresser for years, it waited to be placed in the right piece of jewelry. A perfect fit in the lion�s mouth without any grinding or buffering, it was obvious the stone had waited just for that ring.
I wore my lion every day for almost ten years on the third finger of my right hand. When I started working at the nursing home, I couldn�t wear much jewelry. I don�t even remember the last time I wore my garneted lion. But I remember the moment I realized, sitting on my bed in the new apartment, that I had lost that little, wonderful ring in that big, awful house. I cried as if I had lost my grandfather all over again.
We put emphasis on so many things growing up. Material items take on our emotions and meanings the crafter never meant them to hold. But deep inside, whether we have those items, live in those places or see those people any more, we have those feelings, fresh as the morning dew, until we pass from this life. I lost my ring, but still hold just as strongly to everything it stood for. Someday, I will take my son out to find a lion-head ring of his own, and tell him a story of the man he will never know. But, he will know what that man stood for, the reason he started this tradition, and why we will never forget.