37 years married. 32 years of Gemma Sterling.

May 1987, a jeweler’s repair counter on Wickenden Street in Providence. I was 21 and carrying my grandmother’s gold locket, the chain snapped in two. Walt was 25 and had been at a jeweler’s bench since he was eighteen.

He fixed it in ten minutes, would not take my money, and asked if I liked Italian food. I grew up on Federal Hill. I told him he had a lot to learn.

We married in September 1989 in the church where my parents married. I wore my grandmother’s locket, the one Walt had fixed. My father baked the cake himself and complained about it for a year.

In April 1994 we opened a tiny shop in Bristol, Rhode Island. Walt did repairs and resizing in the back room. I taught art at the elementary school during the week and stood behind the counter every Saturday and all summer.

Walt put my name on the door before his own. He says it was romance. I say he knew who would be talking to the customers.

Our first grandson, Theo, was born in November. Walt gave me a fine chain with one small topaz on it. Then came Nina, Clara and little Leo, and the chain got three more stones.

Customers kept asking about it, so we started choosing birthstone pieces for the shop. They have been our most loved jewelry ever since.

After 28 years of teaching art I retired, and now I am in the shop every day. I choose the pieces, write the little cards by hand and wrap the boxes. Walt still checks every clasp before it goes out the door.

This April we celebrated 32 years of Gemma Sterling. We still argue about the window display. We still have coffee at the kitchen table at seven. And I still choose every piece in this shop as if it were for my own daughters, because most of the time, it is.