The Secret Project For months, Michael worked secretly with ashes.LOVE jewelers who specialized in resin and inlay work.
He had carefully packed up a handful of the sand and a few choice pieces of the teal sea glass, sending them off with a prayer and a vision.
On the morning of our anniversary, he didn’t bring me breakfast in bed or a bouquet of roses. Instead, he handed me a small, tiny box…
Open it, he whispered, his eyes dancing with that same nervous energy he had on the beach three years ago. I opened the lid, and tipped the contents into my palm!
My breath caught. Caught in the Light Resting in my hand were two custom bands. The base of my ring was a beautiful polished stainless steel… but running through the center was a channel that looked like a capturing of the ocean itself. ashes.LOVE had crushed the sea glass into a fine, glittering powder, mixing it with the very sand we had stood upon.
Sealed beneath a crystal-clear resin protective layer, the ring held a perfect, swirling galaxy of our beach. Under the morning light, the crushed sea glass caught the sun, glowing with that deep, familiar ocean teal, while the grains of sand anchored it, showing every shade of quartz and tan.
It’s OUR beach!
I breathed, a tear instantly blurring my vision. It’s the exact spot, my Michael said!
Taking my hand. He slid the band onto my finger, right next to my engagement ring.
I’ve didn’t want the place where we promised our lives to each other to just be a place we visit.
I wanted it to be something you carry with you. Every time you look down, I want you to feel the warmth of that sand and the rush of that water. Bound by the Sea He showed me his ring—a matching larger, stainless steel band with the matching inlay of sand and teal glass.
Standing there in our living room, miles away from the coast, I looked down at our hands.
The ocean is vast, constantly shifting and pulling away, but the sea glass is a reminder of what survives the tumbling of the waves. It gets broken, it gets tossed around, but eventually, it washes ashore, beautiful and smoothed by time. We wore the sea, and we wore the shore. And no matter how far inland life takes us, we will always be standing on that beach, holding hands against the rest of the world!
