donutszenmom.com

I go into work at noontime today. One of the managers tells me she’s having a bad day. She looked at her hand when she was typing and realized the diamond was missing out of her ring.

The ring is beautiful, a combination wedding/engagement ring. Avant garde design, with a pressure setting. The metal of the setting has two finishes, one matt and one shiny. And a detail line of small diamonds. The main diamond was from her husband’s family. She felt really bad about losing something that had been in his family for so long.

She’d looked all over the building, in her car, across the parking lot. By the time I got in to work, she’d given up. She’s quite calm and philosophical, so she was busy coming to grips with what had happened.

As she told me the story, I flashed on a memory of being in one of our conference rooms, talking with her and another manager. I recalled looking at her ring from across the table and being curious that I could see the detail diamonds flashing, but no reflection from the main stone. I thought it was an optical illusion of some sort.

It took me a minute to remember what day the meeting had taken place and which meeting room we’d been in. I didn’t say anything to her, but took a stroll over to the room, recalled where she’d been sitting and looked under the table. There, sure enough, was the diamond, exactly as I imagined.

It was very cool — unravelling all of this from a little fragment of perception.

I went back to her desk.

“Close your eyes and put out your hand…”

“You found it!”

She was so happy. What a nice way to finish up on my last day before vacation.