The story of our ring

My grandparents had a strong marriage for fifty years, despite being separated during a world war and having the occasional plate-smashing argument. Now I'm all grown up and my grandparents have passed on, but the spirit of their love and commitment lives in the colours of the opal in my ring.

Finding a love that lasts a lifetime

Sometimes life doesn't turn out the way you expected, and your first love isn't always your last. Like Larry and I, both my grandparents had been committed to other relationships that hadn't worked out before finding each other.

My grandmother's nickname was 'The Little Spitfire', because she was fierce. Fiercely beautiful, fiercely intelligent, fiercely determined. There was nothing she wouldn't do for me when I was little, and nothing could ever change her mind once she was set on something. She was born with her thumb in her left eye, so one was green and one was blue, and she was the most memorable person in any room, despite only being five foot tall and so skinny she looked at risk of snapping in two if you hugged her too hard.

My grandfather was a tall, strong, calm man with firm political views and a sense of justice, who fought for his country in the war and stayed faithful and loyal to his family, providing a moral backbone for his three children and a sense of honour that has been passed down to my brother and I too.

Love at first sight - flashes of brilliant colour

My grandma was a bridesmaid at her friend's wedding when she met my grandfather, who was the best man. They looked at each other across the aisle and suddenly everything else fell away. She told me from that moment they never looked back, and they were married within the year.

When they were together, my grandparents were passionate and loving, both headstrong and stubborn. After my grandfather passed away my mother read us a little from his war diary, but we had to stop reading it because of the very personal way he described my grandmother - he wrote her poems, too. I don't think many women are made like her, so full of vivacity and spirit. Her eyes gleamed with something sharp and brilliant.

My granddad proposed to my grandma with her favourite stone, an opal, set into a thin gold band with paste stones surrounding it. The opal was beautiful, flashing pink and green and yellow, and she didn't mind that the stones weren't diamonds - during the second world war, when my grandparents were engaged, it was very difficult to afford an engagement ring at all, let alone one with diamonds. My grandma's hands were so tiny that the ring was incredibly small - I couldn't fit it properly on my pinky before we had the stone reset.

The colours of the opal shift and change like the tide, moving with the light and adding a depth of brilliance that isn't visible from far away - like with the best mysteries you have to study it carefully to understand its true beauty. I inherited my grandmother's love for opals, along with her passion and fierce dedication to one man. Like her, I didn't find that person straight away, and my first engagement ring wasn't my last one. Like her, I knew when I had finally found the only person who could make me feel at home.

'Just tell the buggers to sod off' - my grandma in response to me telling her about school bullies

When I was little my grandmother taught me to waltz to the music from old Fred Astaire movies. She made every day magical with stories, and then taught me how to tell my own by turning her hands like the pages of an invisible book, until I grew confident enough to fill my own hands with possibilities and imaginings. I am grateful to my grandmother for her intelligence, wit and capacity for love. I am grateful to my grandfather for his strength and steadfast nature, his teachings that family, honour and duty come first, and for their joint example that before committing to having a family, you have to make sure you are with the right person.

When it came time to choosing a ring, there was only one thing I wanted, to wear my grandmother's stone, and to have it set into a totally unique band of our own design.

Larry and I are a passionate couple, just like my grandparents. We fight, like them, but it's ok, because we love each other completely. I have no doubts that we may smash the occasional plate, too. 

In forty years time when I am helping my own granddaughter answer the questions of her heart, I will look down at the ring that Larry and I made, with my grandparent's stone in, and I will get up and try to teach her how to waltz, no matter how bad at it I might be.