. He spent his spring and summer evenings playing baseball with us kids and his fall and winter evenings glued to the television for just about every sport that came down the pike. My mother was a stay at home mom who babysat for other mothers who chose to work outside of the home. She'd have the neighbor ladies over for coffee every morning and they'd sit at the kitchen table and talk for hours while we children played in the next room or in the backyard.

My older brother and I were very close as children and played together everyday. Because we were poor there weren't any family vacations to the beach or the mountains. Shoot, we didn't even go visit far away relatives. Instead, we made our own fun in our own backyard. Sometimes we'd act out some episodes of our favorite television show ?Lost in Space?. Almost everyday of our summer we'd head to the baseball field a block from our house and play baseball until our mother would yell that it was dinner time. Dad was a baseball coach so we had all the right equipment to play. Dad taught me how to play at the age of 4. By the time I was 8 I was the first girl playing on an all-boy baseball team. While I wasn't the ?best? player, I certainly wasn't the ?worst? either and was usually picked 2nd in a pick up game. Some of my favorite memories were when my brother and I would build a fort out of a pickup truck rack. We'd use blankets and clothes pins to make the walls. It was a great escape from the summer heat. We'd put lawn furniture inside along with a small table and play ?go fish? or ?gin rummy? for hours on summer days. In the winter, when there was snow on the ground we'd go to the local school where there was a big hill (at least it seemed big at the time) and sled until we couldn't feel our fingers or our toes. Other cold days we'd stay inside and play board games like ?Monopoly?, ?Operation? and ?Payday?.

As we got older and went to junior high and high school I noticed just how poor we really were. When the movie ?The Ten Commandments? was on television for the very first time it ran all in one night with a short intermission. My parents allowed my older brother and I to stay up until midnight so we could watch it. I remember at intermission my mother dug into the bottom of her purse and managed to find 6 nickels and 6 dimes. Including my parents and other siblings there were 6 in our family. This money was just enough to purchase each of us a soda from a local soda machine because each soda was just 15 cents at the time. During intermission my brother and I walked a block to the soda machine and bought 6 sodas. This was one of the highlights of my summer.

Now that I was older, I visited my friends houses more often. I noticed that my friends had nicer homes and their parents drove nicer cars than my family had. They also had clothing bought at stores instead of ones their mother made for them out of one pattern and eight different types of material.

My grandfather was an entrepreneur. He had several restaurants and eventually partnered with another person and built a successful plastics company that is still in business today. We visited their house every Sunday after church in the summer. Aunts, uncles, cousins and friends would swarm their backyard and play lawn darts, frisbee and swim. They had a beautiful home, an in-ground pool in the enormous back yard, a riding lawn mower that everyone used to take turns on cutting the grass on Sunday afternoons in the summer. My grandfather was always buying my grandmother diamonds. I remember thinking that my grandparents were the richest people in the world. I can remember the glitter and shine of every new diamond I saw her wear. She had a diamond heart shaped pendant that she never took off. Her favorite ring was a pink diamond my grandfather gave her on one of their anniversaries. My grandmother would always show me her new jewelry when she would visit. Sometimes it was just fashion jewelry but she always wore at least a few diamonds every day. I was mesmerized by the shine. To me these diamonds were a status symbol. At that time in my life they seemed to separate the haves? from the have nots?.

My birthday falls around Christmas so my family celebrated my birthday on Christmas for most of my life. The Christmas just before my fifteenth birthday was no different. The whole family gathered at our old, broken house just like they did every year for the holidays. My mother would spend two days cleaning the house and an entire day cooking the meal for more than 30 people. Only this year was different. This year my grandparent's gave me my own status symbol. I opened my Christmas/Birthday present and inside was a small box. Inside the box was a white gold ring with real diamonds set in it. They weren't big diamonds, nothing more than baguettes really, but to me they were enormous. To me they meant more. They made me feel like I wasn't some poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks anymore. They made me believe in myself just a little bit more and work harder for everything I wanted. This small but priceless gift represented the first day that I knew I wouldn't be poor forever.

I finally had something that none of my friends had. A symbol of what was to come. I put that ring on my finger that day and didn't remove it for over 10 years.

I've grown up a lot since then. I now know how diamonds are created, the different cuts they come in, the clarity scale and why some have black carbon deposits. I also know that my grandfather bought my grandmother all those diamonds because after his first stroke no insurance company would allow him purchase any more life insurance. The diamonds were purchased so that in the event of his death my grandmother would have something of value (because diamonds appreciate in value) to sell in order to live the rest of her life in comfort. My grandparents are gone now. I think of them from time to time and miss them very much. I still have the ring I received on that day. It holds many happy memories for me and I am glad that it was my grandparents who provided me with those memories.

About the Author

Donna is an entrepreneur following in her grandfather's footsteps. She currently is the owner of a small graphic design and printing company and has an internet site for those wishing to make their own memories where you can find beautiful discount gold and diamond jewelry.

Give your favorite girl a gift that will last a lifetime. Diamonds really are forever.

www.goldndiamondjewelry.com