little things mean alot

However they should never mean everything.

I've known this for a while, especially in connection with my mom. But there are times when the hard reality is so blatant that it must be acknowledged. So in the spirit of soul-baring I shall relate to you an example in which I fail a critical tactical throw that my Grampa endorsed: challenge authority.
My mother was beautiful in her twenties and thirties. She was a bit gangly as a youth but grew into a beautiful woman. I don't know when that changed but when I was in school, she was compared to a Hag which I could not disagree with. Part of her personal identity was a ring that she always wore, almost in place of her wedding band. She definitely showed it more deference than her wedding band. Anyway, the story she tells is that she got the ring as a Sweet 16 gift from Grampa and Gramma Ada. It fit perfectly at 16. It was her way to measure something which to this day I am not clear on. It was either her weight or her attractiveness.
The ring is stamped 9-10K pounds sterling. No matter how one views it the silver settings form a backwards "S". In the bowls of the S are two amethysts of an oval cut. The center is set with 9 diamonds. it is a size 5.5 or 6. When I noticed it as a young girl and thought that if being a girl meant you could were pretty things like that then I might not mind being a girl. I mentioned one day that I would like a similar ring. I might have been 12.
My mother's response was to tell me the about how special she felt to have received such a gift. This ring meant more to her than it probably should have. But I took the story for what she said it was. It was one of the last expensive things Grampa bought for mom. At 16 she was a woman and the ring was her adulthood present. I suspect it was Grampa and Gramma's way of getting a bat mitzvah gift in without exposing themselves. Anyway, it was mom's symbol of womanhood and femininity. So when I noticed it and tried to connect with her through the ring she laughed me off. I was fairly persistent for two years. Finally, in front of my sleepover friends who loved the ring as well, she made me try it on. Then she mocked me that it wouldn't fit. I was 14 and it wouldn't go passed the first knuckle on my index finger, let alone fit the ring finger. She told me that when I was small enough to wear it I could have it but that she would be dead before that would ever happen.
She was right. As I type this it is on my sinister index finger, hung up on the first knuckle. She has been dead for 13 years. Today I went to a jeweler and tried to sell it for cash. It is worth 20.00. 19.11 to be exact. But 20.00. The two large purple stones are synthetic Alexandrite. The 9 small white chips are white sapphires not totaling even a .25 karat. It is sterling. My mother spent so much time focusing on its monetary value with a secondary influence on her sentiments that all these years I have seen it as a measure of my own worth. It was her way of reminding me I was "Too fat to be attractive to anyone."; "Too ugly to waste time and money teaching me about makeup and buying current clothes"; and that I was the most irresponsible person in the world because I could not refrain from reaching into the candy dish. [SIDEBAR: she bought the crystal candy dish after I decided to be careful about food choices. She bought it with a lid so she could hear the pinging from the crystal pieces meeting. After I gave up on trying to lose weight she didn't keep the dish full anymore. I have to admit... she challenged my inner Holmes. It became a game to get the candy without getting caught. I am more a lab rat than Brain. Poit!]
Then when we tried to negotiate my class ring she reneged on her agreement so I never got a ring. Her logic was that I was just going to keep growing and the ring wouldn't fit after a year anyway. So she didn't waste her money again.
So today, after learning that there was no more value in her measure-ring than there is in any of the semi precious stone rings I have bought on my own... I was able to see things so much more clearly. In accepting my mother's assertions for facts and her facts being as erroneous as her ability to know good yard sale junk from regular yard sale junk (none of what she termed "valuable antiques" have had much value at all) I have held beliefs about myself that are in error as well.
It is just a cheap ring. Her initial feelings connected to it are important as they were from a place of love and esteem. But what the ring symbolizes for me is as cheap a sentiment as the materials that compose the ring. And here is my point. Just because our parents say something doesn't make it true. Just because our friends tell us something does not make it true. I valued my mom as a parents whose love I strove to attain so she had a great deal of influence in my self image. I held a great deal of stock in the Liar's opinions because she had been my best friend for a long time; and on the surface, she seemed to contradict mom's obvious manipulations. As persons of value and trust they were able to do much damage. So, my Friends, I say that we have to question.
In having the truth from the jeweler about the Ring's real value I have the tools to fight what voices of hers remain in my head. Nay, those voices are already gone. I have the concrete proof that we take from the previous generation all of their garbage if we do not question. And, in my case, not just that those are horrible things to say to child of any age. But that the real crime is that I allowed myself to be enslaved for so long. Had I taken this to a jeweler sooner, she could not have affected me for so long. I do of course take it as a good sign that not only have I confronted the pain of the past through contacts among my classmates, but now have this to finally silence my mom. I consider this an auspicious sign inasmuch as I was finally ready to confront issues head on. This gives me some strength to confront other issues, my brother and sister and my own inner critic. There is a small version of me that sounds so much like mom that I have been thinking it was her. It isn't. It's mini me, trying to be the adult her mother exemplifies. it's time to put that little girl in a chair and give her a good talking to.