Pride and Joy Competition 2008 - THE ENTRIES

LADYB'S ENTRY

This is a wonderful Contest, Lesley. Thank you for this.

Here is my entry...



My Ruby Cab of Love


This is a story about a little girl’s dreams and a grown woman’s passion. I did not create the cab that highlights this story. Rather I was gifted with this precious cab by my own true love.

Come. Take my hand. We’ve a journey to make that begins many years ago in a sick child’s wonderful imagination…

For much of my childhood I hated wintertime. For most children that I knew it meant sucking on icicles, building snowmen, engaging in snowball fights, having freezing-cold fun watching your breath escape into the frigid air.

For me, it meant spending days trapped in bed and nights trapped in fearsome croup tents. If there was an upper respiratory infection or disease anywhere in the vicinity of Philadelphia I would try it on for size, year after year after year. I had every “itis” one can have associated with airways and I had repeated bouts of croup, whooping cough, and pneumonia. Once, during the worst of a whooping cough episode, my mother was talking on the phone—located downstairs and probably 30 feet from my bed—when I began a helplessly prolonged bout of coughing. My aunt heard the whooping and asked my mother when we had gotten a hound dog!

So winter times were torturous times for me…until I learned to read. Then my bed was no longer a trap but rather a magic carpet that could take me anywhere and every place in all times. One such place was to King Solomon’s Mines (read in an abridged-for-children’s illustrated version that downplayed the violence of the adult version). I was fascinated by the idea of finding a mine and digging for jewels—especially the red jewels—RUBIES!!! I determined then and there—at the ripe old age of six, in the confines of blankets and a croup tent—that one day I would go mining for my very own rubies! And thus began my lifelong love of and fascination with the Gemstone of Kings.

Fast forward to 1971. Having survived the perils of my childhood I pursued another childhood dream—to one day become a Physical Therapist. I completed my Bachelor’s in Biology and was one of only 20 young women accepted into the United States Army’s first graduate degree program in Physical Therapy, offered at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. So there I was, Labor day, September 6, 1971, a Second Lieutenant in the Army Medical Specialist Corps—the only female in my entire extended family to serve the Nation; in fact, the only member of my generation, to serve the Nation—about to embark on the unfolding of a dream I had followed since the age of twelve. I was on top of the world—or at least the top of the Female Officers’ Quarters, which had an expansive sun roof that offered a phenomenal panoramic view of the San Antonio skyline. It was magnificent until I noticed that I wasn’t alone. Some scrawny guy in cut-off denim shorts, tire-tread sandals, and a goofy blue hat was also on the roof. He approached and I saw he had a good camera—the kind you had to focus, and all that stuff, yourself—slung round his neck.

With greetings exchanged he explained he was on the roof to take pictures of the hot-air weather balloon that was to have been released by a local radio station that morning. And as I gazed out over that brilliantly blue, clear, panoramic skyline, with not even a hint of a balloon—hot air or otherwise—I knew that the only hot air was coming from this fellow who was pretending to be a Second Lieutenant in the Army Medical Specialist Corps, too. This WAS the Female Officers’ Quarters after all and he definitely wasn’t female! I suspected that he was one of the enlisted fellows from the quarters to the other side of the hospital. Those guys were always coming up with ingenious ways to meet the female Officers. I had to give this guy credit…his story was VERY ingenious. Turns out--his story was true, as about two hours later, while in my suite and listening to the radio-station he claimed was supposed to be releasing the balloon, I heard the DJ excitedly exclaiming that they had finally done it! The balloon was aloft!

So I did what any sensible girl would do. I went down to the next floor of the Female Officers’ Quarters (I lived in Suite 501) to Suite 424, knocked on the door, and Voila!!! There he stood…my once and future LOVE…he of the cutoffs, tire-tread sandals, and goofy blue hat. He had his camera in hand and said he was just about to return to the roof because he had heard the DJ announce the successful—albeit delayed—launching of the weather balloon. So up to the roof we went, and thus began the rest of my life!

Bob and I have been together ever since. Through good times and less good, through joy and sorrow, through two little munchkins that grew into two amazing adults, through glorious good health and devastating cancer, through LIFE itself. Bob is the very first person who loved me unconditionally—no strings attached. He has been beside me, ahead of me with an outstretched hand, behind me with both arms pushing. He has loved me for who I am, and because of who I am. He has encouraged me to become all that I am. And along the way he has come to understand that a little girl had a dream of one day mining for rubies.

Through the years Bob has gifted me with several ruby rings and earrings—all very much loved and appreciated. But still…there was that dream. The ruby hiding in the earth, just waiting to be found.

Then last March we made plans to do something never before attempted by either of us. We planned to go to North Carolina in order to “go mining”!!!

Thus it was that in the first week of May two older folks, with their inner children set free, went to play in the flumes of infamous Franklin, NC. I say infamous because as all “true” rock hounds know, Franklin’s flumes are famous for the amazing and magical abundance of gemstones, minerals, and rocks that are usually found not in NC but everywhere else in the world. No matter…we were miners and we were mining for some seriously wonderful treasures!

And then there it was…the most incredible chunk of green rock with red spots all over it!!! It was beautiful and magical and it made me laugh with sheer happiness! “What is this?”, I called out to the Flume-Meister. “That”, he replied, “is an excellent example of what we call Watermelon Ruby”. He said a bunch more but I didn’t quite register his words for suddenly I was six again and I had just unearthed my very own ruby!!!!



We found many more “gems” during that magical week in NC. Sharing that adventure with Bob was…well it was simply WONDERFUL! We truly were like two little kids storing up memories to be reviewed on future quiet evenings and at boisterous family gatherings. We returned to our home in Florida, temporarily sated, savoring every moment of our great mining expedition.

We then joined our local Rock Club in order to get an ongoing “fix” of all things rock. We have a wonderfully equipped Club and before long, Bob decided he wanted to try his hand at slabbing and cabbing. And for his very first venture, he decided to work on our magnificent “Watermelon” rock. No one at the club had the heart (or the foresight?) to tell Bob that he had chosen an especially challenging first project. The rock has been variously identified as Ruby in Zoisite and Ruby in Fuschite. (It’s kind of like Love when you think about it…Who can define it? Who knows exactly what it is?) Either way, it is Rubies (hard) embedded in an “ite” (soft) so cutting, shaping, and polishing a cab of this rock could be daunting, to say the least.

Not for my honey, my Bob. He cut the slab—it took some doing—and then cut a cab—even though the Workshop Coordinator really, REALLY wanted him to use one of the standard templates for his cut—based on what the rock was telling him. And then he polished and gently shaped and polished some more. I wasn’t with Bob during the polishing stages…I don’t feel all that comfortable in the crowded workshop. So I would eagerly wait for Bob to come home each of those evenings (it took three visits to the shop since the cabbing machines must be shared amongst many members) and show me his progress. And then on that third night he came home and gifted me with this:




It isn’t quite finished. Some people have said: “Oh! That needs to be wrapped!” Others have told us: “You need to have that put into just the right setting, definitely gold!”

I don’t know that it will “get finished” anytime soon. For me, when I hold it in my hand or hold it up to a light source and wonder at the play of light through the ruby, I feel happy and loved and treasured. Our love isn’t quite finished yet, either. But for now I know I am blessed…I have a soul-mate who loves ME and who gifted me with much more than the ruby of my childhood dreams. Bob has given me LOVE—the most precious of gifts in any King’s treasure trove.


And he has given me this—my Ruby Cab of Love!





Lady B