U.S. of Americanity | existabovethenoise

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As my birthday approaches I’ve found myself thinking more and more about youth. College kids look younger than I remember. High school kids look like they don’t care about anything at all. Elementary school kids look like they bite. Toddlers look cuter than I remember. Babies are still scary. And I just saw a 3D sonogram the other day – that is the coolest, grossest thing I’ve seen all year. Times are a-changing!

In sum, the world seems a scarier place than when my mom was my age and decided she was ready to have me. I’m thinking long and hard about who my future children will become, the world they will grow up in, who their peers will be, and who among you will be their mentors. And I wonder if, as an intelligent person and mindful individual, you ever feel comfortable bringing an innocent life into this world. There are the universal insecurities of parenting: the selfishness, the financial instability, the definitive reality that you’ll screw up your child somehow. There are the choices you must make that you can’t guarantee will turn out well: what color to paint the nursery, which school to send them to, what tactic of discipline will both allow you to control your child and to stay out of jail. Aside from these communally shared concerns, I’ll offer my own tailor-made top 5 child-rearing fears now, well before I’m confronted with the reality of having kids of my own to mess up or dump at your house at will.

1- No Newtown: Seriously, how do you avoid Raising Adam Lanza? I read Lionel Shriver’s “We Need to talk about Kevin” and I was ready to get my tubes tied. The lack of support some parents have to take care of their ‘special needs’ child is just sad. But when your child is a danger to others, where does parenting end and protecting the public begin? And how is it done? Successfully? I want to raise children that are neither victims, nor perpetrators of violence. It seems there is no money back guarantee on this one.

2- “I wish you have a daughter like you.” Signed, MOM: My mother has wished that ill omen on me since I was in elementary school, but frankly I don’t want a kid like me – or my brother. My brother and I are not alike in most things, but if I spawned a child like either one of us then that means that I will have to be on my toes every day for the rest of their lives. There will be no days off. They would either be a constant prankster who always needs hands-on parental oversight OR an aloof nerd whose quiet plotting means that they are perpetually homeless from the age of puberty onward. Actually, both types of kids sound equally sucky to parent. I sure wouldn’t want that job!

3- R. Kelly would be dead if Aaliyah were my child: Not all child rapists, molesters or predators are as well as known or as sleazy to the sight as R. Kelly. Most live amongst us as friends, family members, and trusted members of our community. Have you ever actually looked up the sex offender registry in your city? It’s frightening! What’s more frightening is that “One researcher stated that more than 70% of abusers are immediate family members or someone very close to the family.” I fully intend to cause bodily harm to anyone who dares to…. Whew! Just thinking about it makes me want to move below the Mason Dixon, so I can shoot someone with my legally owned and registered shotgun!

4- Let them eat cake?: My food restrictions being as they are, I am conscious of the fact that what I think is healthy for me is not the most conventional diet for a child. Sure, I can Vitamix their raw food smoothies, but kids need cow’s milk every once in a while. I probably bought a total of 4 gallons of cow’s milk in the last 2 years – 3.5 were used for baked goods for colleagues and the other .5 were consumed by any number of foreign visitors squatting in my guest room. I’ll have to reintroduce dairy, meat and rice to my fridge; adjust for the lack of calcium, iron and Vitamins B, C and D in my diet; and reduce my intake of tuna, coffee, dark chocolate, spiked cider, wine and processed foods (even if they are Trader Joe’s brand). Argh!

5- Keep the ole’ ticker ticking why dontcha!: In the last 5 years, both my grandfathers have passed away. So I’m concerned that I may not pop these babies out in a timely enough fashion such that they’ll have the benefit of knowing their great grandmothers. I had the benefit of growing up with the women who mothered my grandmothers and it’s really important to me that I give my children that possibility as well. I pray for my grandmothers’ health, not just for my unborn children’s sake – but I get the feeling that they’re not done teaching and I’m not done learning from them just yet.

I have never seen the movie “Blood Diamond” and I have never downplayed the diamond to sound less materialistic to men. I genuinely wasn’t interested in diamonds and I thought I had three very good reasons why: 1) I think the diamond industry is monopolistic to the point of being predatory all up, down and through it’s delivery chain. 2) I think the act of gifting diamonds is incredibly uncreative. 3) I think it’s just a goddamn rock. Suffice it to say that I have been avidly anti-diamond since my teenage years, but one year in India changed all that.

I was completely unprepared for the realities of the Indian diamond, gem and jewelry market, all of which made me rethink my previous thoughts. First, while the industry remains incredibly brutal, the industry’s pricing for Indian consumers is drastically less than it is for its Western consumers. The difference is dramatic; often the same quality stone (and often a lower quality gold setting) will cost an American two to three times as much in America than it costs an American in India. Imagine the price drop for an Indian in India. Maybe the delivery chain on that side of the Atlantic ocean isn’t as predatory? Second, when I buy diamonds for myself, that nullifies the creativity clause. Whatever I buy for myself is always incredibly fly. And, third, when the price of said rock becomes affordable, dare I say reasonable, then maybe I can remove the diminutive “just” from my thoughts and acknowledge, without judgment, that yes, it is a rock. A very pretty rock.

Well, it took me a full year to actually buy diamond jewelry for myself. The first purchase was gut wrenching. It was a Mughal style antique emerald and uncut diamond ring, set in what’s probably just aluminum foil. I was too much of a novice then to know that I should not have paid what I paid, but it was pretty and I thought that buying vintage was like recycling – no? No. It’s not and I wasn’t fooling anybody but myself with this shucking and jiving intended to distract from the fact that I was really making a fundamental change. Perhaps, I can only liken the jolt of my buying diamonds to what I imagine it would feel like for me – a pescatarian for 11 years – to eat land-animal meat again. Taking that step would mean that many boundaries, more ritual than moral, would be broken. I asked myself, “is there anything you won’t do?” (If I told you my answer, I’d have to kill you.)

Imagine my shock and awe when I fell in love with my engagement ring. To be clear, I fell in love with the ring AFTER I fell in love with the man. But, the ring and my reaction to it caught us all by surprise – me, my jeweler, and my fiancée. See, both my jeweler and my fiancée had heard my long rants about how I didn’t want a diamond wedding ring and how diamonds were so incredibly boring. I can still see my fiancée’s face now – his pockets disappointed, but his eyes gloated “gotcha now little miss goodie two shoes!” Yea well he got me, literally. Only my visiting friend – ever the touchstone of American stereotypes – reminded me that I was supposed to want a diamond ring. That, in fact, I should want an even larger one than the one I wanted and that I’d be a fool for thinking that now was the time for playing teenage anti-diamond activist.

Yet, for the three of us who looked like deer caught in headlights, the knockdown drag out battle between me and myself raged on for close to an hour. What did I stand for if I would cave now? Didn’t that violate thought #2? Hadn’t I broken all my rules when I bought my own diamond jewelry? Was I being a hypocrite? Did I set this man up to think he would really be able to marry me by proposing with a piece of ivory, when what I really wanted was bling? Wasn’t he stupid for believing me in the first place?

Maybe the answer to all these questions is ‘hell yes.’ All I know is that I walked out of that store an engaged woman and everybody was all smiles. The morally sound little girl inside of me awoke from her slumber, but then she stared into the glow from the pretty, shiny rocks on my left hand and she went to sleep dreamily happy.

I laid that little girl to rest peacefully in India and, gleefully, showed off the symbol of my being a taken woman. In India, people don’t typically get engaged with diamond rings. So, there’s no oohing and aahing over the jewels. They want to know why they haven’t yet received the wedding invitation, if I’m planning to have a nikah or if I want to wear bangles for a full year. In their minds, if the date isn’t set – then what’s the value of yapping about being engaged? Fair enough.

I have no answer for that wedding date question, but first things first! I had to come home to face the family and friends I left behind – those that wished me well and those that clearly couldn’t give a damn. There were the men of yesteryear that said, ‘yea, I saw your Facebook page. That’s him right?’ And my cousin who, 3 weeks after seeing me in person wearing my ring, said “Congrats girl! I just saw your ring in your pictures. You’re engaged, right?” We all knew this day would come, but oh how awkward and social media dependent it was.

Let me say, here more than ever I’ve had to go back to rethinking the ring. Let me just list a few of the questions I’ve gotten, “What kind of cut is that? Why did you get a band? How many carats is it? What’s the clarity? From India, really? He must really love you, huh?” I could go on, but I’m too tired to dig. Obviously, nothing was ever meant with malice and a lot of the time people sounded more impressed with my ring than even I was. What’s come full circle, however, are the original questions I asked myself about what having, buying, wearing diamonds means to me.

My few self-purchased pieces are really just for show. They are not born from an act of love, or a symbol of ever-lasting commitment. They are not meant to be worn everyday and they are more an investment than adornment. But, my engagement ring – the very thing that binds this man’s heart to me despite the almost 8,000 miles that lay between us – is special. It shouldn’t be a challenge to some teenage rules I lived by to silently shame the De Beers and Oppenheimer families. It shouldn’t be a fall from moral grace. It shouldn’t be a topic of conversation or comparison. It shouldn’t be a symbol of self-doubt.

It should be transcendent. Symbolic of a new era. A time when I don’t owe anyone, but this man, an explanation for my actions, my choices, my happiness, and my glee. For all intents and purposes, this set of rocks is supposed to symbolize change, the forging of a new foundation with a partner. Perhaps, this is a choice that I can make while on this team that I never would have made alone. Dare I say, it never even occurred to me to make this choice when I was alone. As I think about it now, it never occurred to me even when I was previously in serious relationships. What my inner teenager would call being a sell out, feels a lot like being an adult to me now. In other words, it sure feels like I know ‘he’s the one.’ He, being the man – not the ring.

So, like I said, until about two months ago I was avidly anti-diamond. As of today, I’m madly in love with a man who loves the woman I am today, the raging teenager he had to assuage to get to me and the sleeping little girl that he kisses on the forehead every night via Skype. For all the things that this ring conjures up of my past and the road that led to that serendipitous trip to Mumbai in October, I am rendered speechless by all that it will mean in the days we have yet to see.

‘Til every last prong breaks, and every last diamond falls out – may we be bigger than our abstract thoughts and open to all the new challenges that this partnership will withstand. May we be strong and light. May we be a rock.

A very pretty rock.