A wedding ring

Brian's artwork speaks to me, and I often find myself just staring at the rich colors. So when I was recently looking for a piece for my new office/studio, I contacted Brian about where to view his work. We met up and I found two paintings to take home to try out in the space. I chose the one I liked, and as an afterthought took the second piece into the kitchen where my husband and I had been casually looking for something as well. We've been in Santa Barbara for about five years, and as it happens, neither of us wanted to move here. Though I'm from the area originally, uprooting from work and family was hard and caused us to have a few very rocky years, analyzing ourselves and our relationship to figure out if we were still in the same path after a 40 year marriage. We've now reconciled, and when we held up the piece in the kitchen, it felt like it just belonged there, like the perfect thing had found us rather than the other way around. It was as if the painting was speaking, saying "Welcome home." We both got very emotional, because it was clear that the painting spoke to a feeling of "home" – which meant both California, and more importantly, knowing in our hearts that we are each other's home. We've experienced such a rebirth of commitment that I've been considering getting a new wedding ring, and to that thought my husband looked at the new painting and said: "Maybe this is our wedding ring."