A few years after my mother died, a Christmas card fell through our mail slot with a heavy thud. Inside I found the turquoise ring my mother wore. It was sent to me by Last Girl, the sister born after I left, a woman I didn’t know. The stone was greenish. The setting crude. The meaning weighty. I had nothing tangible of my mother’s. Only memory. Within a week the ring fell in half and I set it aside. Years later I brought the brokenness with me on a trip to Santa Fe to visit my dear friend @mjlonner. She kept the ring with the promise to take it to a jewelry fixer there in the nearby town of Madrid. I’d almost forgotten that broken ring when my friend came for a visit last week and brought it back to me soldered together. Amazed, I slipped the heaviness back onto my index finger. Every day for several days I wore my mother’s ring on the pointer finger of my right hand. Shopping, helping, cooking, cleaning. One day over breakfast with my friend in a favorite spot I looked down and where once there was a greenish stone I now saw my own reflection in the square of polished silver behind a setting no longer there. Broken again. And yet not broken. I may never fully fix this forever broken ring and I am fine with that. After all this time. Driven to find meaning in all the maltreatment. Needing to put the pieces back together again, I am at last okay with what I have been given. May we all be content with who we are and what we have been given. Happy New year to you and yours. #fostergirls #agingouttakesalifetime #gifts #writersofinstagram #acceptanceistheanswer https://www.instagram.com/p/B6iqsUWB7Yo/?igshid=126wv6g0lvxbg