It was my mother’s wedding ring.  It was delicate, and old, and sweet, and I spent hours when I was a little girl, holding her hand and looking at it, tracing the lines of the little bow that held three impossibly tiny diamond chips.  Dad put it on her hand when she was 19.  And it meant the world to me.

How I lost it, and where I lost it, is still a mystery.  I had it in my hand last week, and could have sworn I packed it in my suitcase when I came back to Park City, but it wasn’t here when I unpacked. My brother and sister-in-law scoured my home in Santa Barbara for me yesterday, and it was nowhere to be found.

I spent a sleepless night feeling heartsick, feeling empty, and aching for my parents. They loved Kim and would have been delighted that we got married.  I was going to wear that tiny little band next to my new wedding band, so that every time I looked down at my hand I could feel them near me.

I stumbled, or rather grumbled through the morning, brooding and inconsolable.  I busied myself with errands and emails, trying to move on.

Then around lunchtime,  the phone rang.  A gentleman with a subtle southern accent said he was looking for Barbara Boyle.  Yes, I said, this is she.  He said, this is probably crazy but would you happen to be related to Mary Lorraine Eagan of New Orleans?  She was my mother, I told him, somewhat hesitantly.  That is what I had hoped, he replied.

His name was Fred, and his mother was my mother’s best friend when they were growing up in New Orleans.  He had lost his mother to cancer when he was only 7 years old, but he had boxes and boxes of memorabilia of her life that he used to try and get to know her.  Invariably, in the pictures of his mother when she was young, my mother was there too, with handwritten notes: Rainy Eagan and me at the Audubon Park pool, Rainy Eagan and me at prom.  They were nearly inseparable.

He had googled Rainy’s name, and found my blog, Pecan Pie, Creole Gumbo and all.  And now, he had found me.

What a remarkable world.

He told me his mother was named Elizabeth Walsh, and I suddenly remembered Mom talking about her best friend, Betty Walsh.  He wondered if I would be interested in seeing these old photographs of my mom and his when they were young.

That is when I began to cry.

I have lost my sweet parents, and may very well have lost their wedding ring.  But somehow, they found their way to me, right on the day I needed it most.  Somehow, their love, their spirit and passion for life, lingers, and still has the power to reach out and touch me, physically and palpably.  I find it most amazing.

Fred is a flight attendant for United, and was racing for a plane, so he hasn’t had a chance to email me the photos.  But when he does, I will share them with you.   I can hardly wait.

Dad had three favorite songs: On Top of Old Smokey, Born to Lose and Wonderful World.  The first was chiefly a song to be sung while shaving, the second was what he played over and over when he and Mom would listen to records on Saturday night and he was feeling nostalgic or some such nonsense, but the third really captured how he saw life in the end, as he looked back on it after 85 years on the planet.

The longer I live, the more I agree with the final theme.

Yes, I say to myself, what a wonderful world.  Oh, yeah.

Throughout my entire career, I was able to escape the drudgery of jury duty, because I was convinced that what I did for a living, advertising, took precedence over serving.  My meetings were way too important, my assignments too pressing, and I was always able to get a fancy letter from a CEO or other VIP to excuse me.

Now that I am not working, I have no such excuses. Believe me, I racked my brain looking for them.  So I found myself for the first time, somewhat timidly, making my way to the Superior Court of Santa Barbara very early Tuesday morning to report for duty.

It did not start well.

First off, patience has never been one of my strengths, and I had even less of it than usual that first day.  After a small scuffle with the “Juror’s Parking” parking attendant, I ran the several blocks to the Superior Court, arriving late to a standing room only auditorium of potential jurors who were getting instructions for the day.  Over two hundred of us spent the next two hours standing in line, checking in, standing in line again, getting a badge, waiting in uncomfortable chairs, then standing in line again to go up the stairs through security into the courtroom.

In the courtroom were no less than five armed bailiffs.  The air was formal and tense.  Four defendants and each of their attorneys sat and watched us walk in and take our places, one by one.  As they stared at us, they reminded me of when my colleagues and I would hold casting auditions for commercials, and we would sit back and whisper among ourselves as we took measure of the actors and decide who would get the part.  I did not draw one comfortable breath the entire time I was in that airless courtroom. It was a trial concerning one murder and one severe beating, and would have required our attendance for 6 to 8 weeks, so ultimately most of us, including me, were excused and asked to report to another courtroom after lunch.

The afternoon went slightly better.  After waiting for nearly two hours, we were once again asked to get in line and walk (please no jay walking!) across the street to another courtroom where they began interrogating us in depth to be jurors.  Fortunately there was no security screening and only one defendant, but still, waiting to be called felt like a combination of waiting to get a mammogram and waiting to be assigned a seat on an oversold airplane.

The rest of the day was spent listening to the stories of the potential jurors who were being questioned by the judge and attorneys.  Some were poor, some were very wealthy. One guy seemed ill, and I think one may have been drunk.  Most were thoughtful, earnest and conscientious people just trying to do the right thing.  I was touched by how, like me, no one really wanted to spend the next several days in court as they, too, had lives and families and things they needed to do.  Yet they did as they were told, spoke from the heart about what they believed, and allowed themselves to be seated or dismissed, as the judge decreed.

It was humbling.

The afternoon spilled into the next day, and I appeared again after a restless sleep, wanting to be called, wanting not to be called, and wanting it all to be over.  I was finally called, answered everything to the best of my limited abilities, and was thanked and dismissed.

I flew out of the courtroom into the brilliant sunshine and felt oddly exhilarated.  I realized it was the first time since I left work that I really was required to spend a few days being responsible, and it felt good. It felt good to be part of something that mattered to the freedoms I so carelessly enjoy, and it felt good to have been part of a community again.

This week, I have been thinking about the tragedy in Tucson, and the ordinary people who did such extraordinary things; a husband who threw himself over his wife to save her from being shot, an intern who tended to the congresswoman’s wounds in a way that surely saved her life, the little old lady (even littler and older than I) who stripped a magazine away from the shooter and prevented even more shots being fired.

What would I have done had I been outside that supermarket that morning?  I honestly can’t say.  I doubt if I would have done anything heroic.  But I could not have hidden behind my job and say that I couldn’t help because I have a meeting to get to or a script to write. I hope I would have had the presence of mind to do whatever was right.    And I hope I would have found the strength within me to do so.

I understand now, like never before, that jury duty is a simple, basic, common duty I have as an American, and I feel honored to have been called to serve.  I respect and celebrate those who sat next to me throughout those uncomfortable hours,  who, one by one, did what was required of them for the state to select 12 jurors.

Maybe next time I will have the distinct honor of being seated.

OK.  There is a 300 pound gorilla in the room, or rather in the blog, and it is me.  Yes, dear reader, there is something important that I haven’t been forthcoming about.

I got married.

I didn’t mention it sooner because it didn’t feel appropriate to announce my marriage in a blog.  I know, Prince Charles announced Kate and Will’s engagement on Twitter, but I am clearly not as hip as Prince Charles.  Still, now that the dust has settled, I have been finding it hard to write about life after advertising in a heartfelt way, and not mention that life after advertising can include something as life changing and magical as getting married.

So there.  It’s out.  After a mere 11 years of courtship, my love and I rashly decided Christmas Eve was the perfect time to formalize what we want our future to be.  We told his three sons fifteen minutes before the ceremony (the two in Park City were immediately enlisted as our Best Men; we texted the oldest son overseas, as it was the middle of the night there!), and called our families with the good news just after the Mayor of Park City pronounced us husband and wife.

We didn’t, and don’t want to make a big fuss about the wedding.  We have both been married before, and there is another big wedding in the family next summer that deserves all of our attention.  But as you are my readers, and I want to speak to you from the heart, it felt right finally to let you know about the change in my relationship status, as they say on Facebook.

Now, getting married is not something I expected when I left New York for Park City, although obviously it is something we have discussed for  a long time.  But after paring away the busy day to day life I had, taking time to stop and think and feel, realizing what really matters and what just takes up time in the day, I came to the super clear realization that all that matters in life is love.  Kindness, caring, and love.  And that is what I have found.

I do understand the peculiarity of two gray haired people with a couple of lifetimes behind them, joining hands and vowing to start a new life together.  It is an odd picture, to be sure.  But there is something about the picture that is gently reassuring to me, having taken so long to come to this point, knowing that we are both walking into it with eyes open wide, and bringing to it pretty darn realistic expectations of what marriage is and isn’t.

And I do feel the future never looked so bright.

Yes, I do.

My family always celebrated Christmas Eve with more vigor than any other day of the year.  We had our rituals, reverent and irreverent.  My mother made her amazing seafood gumbo, then we would light the fire and the candles and read from St. Luke, Chapter 2, v.1-20.  Dad would read “A visit from St. Nicholas” but he always changed it to Santa Claus, and my sister in law Megan would share her amazing and uniquely Megan-like readings.  Finally, we would sing every Christmas carol known to man, including some my father made up and we all knew by heart.

When we were all full from eating and our faces hurt from laughing and smiling, we would head off to our beds.  And the last thing my father would say to me every single Christmas Eve was,  “Remember, this is a magic night.”

I believed it then. I believe it now.

May you all feel the special magic that the love and joy of the season brings.

Merry Christmas.

Every year in December, ad agency creatives get SWAG from editors and music houses, stuff like sweatshirts and baseball caps, and most of mine got donated to the junior creatives who actually look good in it.  But one year, many years ago,  I was given a little book, and it set me free.  I confess I don’t even remember which editor gave it to me (an opportunity for better branding on their part), but I have carried it around with me for years. It is “Watercolor for the Artistically Undiscovered.”

Having worked with incredibly talented art directors my whole career, I was justifiably intimidated by their ability.  I would never presume to draw or paint or design anything, as whatever I did was always so ridiculous compared to what flowed magically from their hands.  Once, in college, I had a sympathetic illustration professor who was kind and encouraging to me, but even he had to point out for me where I got the curve of a torso just right, or captured the light nicely.  I knew in my heart that this was a realm that I could never master.

But this book brought out my inner kindergarten artist, who was joyous and proud and creative, if not very gifted.  It made painting fun again, and made me not feel like an idiot for trying.

When I was working I rarely had time to play around with watercolors, except on the occasional Sunday afternoon after the chores and groceries and crossword puzzles were done.  Fortunately, now I have time, and I have once again dug out the paper and paints and feel like a happy little kid again.

This book is still available on line from all the usual sources, and if you are looking for an inexpensive, last minute gift that can just possibly change somebody’s life, or at least their disposition, I recommend it highly.

And maybe one of these days,  I will share a painting or two on this post, if you promise not to laugh.