Grandma Polly’s Garnet Ring

After Ted’s oldest sister opened a tiny, blue velvet bag, she tipped out a rose-colored garnet ring into her palm.
The band was large and spun around on her finger when she tried it on.
“This is my grandmother’s ring,” she announced. “Grandma Polly’s. She had extremely large hands although when I mentioned that once to Mom, she disagreed and said, ‘My mother had beautiful hands.’”
It was also too large for Ted’s other two sisters who finally passed it to me. It fit loosely over my middle finger since I have large hands for a woman, something I’ve always been self-conscious about.
“It’s yours,” the oldest sister said, but I protested, “It’s your grandmother’s. It should stay in the family.”
“You are family,” she said, and that was how I ended up with Grandma Polly’s beautiful garnet ring.
Ted’s mom, Ruth S. Palmer, died on December 16, 2023, and we had gathered to clear out her house and get it ready to sell.
Even going through her jewelry proved a herculean task, not because many of the pieces were valuable, but because they held memories.
I loved Ruth, and she revered her own mother, Polly Skousen Sloan. I never had the privilege of meeting Polly except through the stories that Ruth told, but I’d come to know her as a remarkable, courageous, and compassionate woman.
Polly was born in a wagon box on October 23, 1886, the first child of Daniel and Melvina (Mallie) Clay Greer Skousen. When she was a baby, they lived in a tent in the mountains where her dad cut logs to help build a new community.
One summer day, Ruth wrote, Polly’s mom took her outside for fresh air. Suddenly, she audibly heard the words, “‘Go, bring your baby inside.’
She looked up from the potatoes she was peeling and all around the room. Seeing no one, she looked out the door and could see no one but Polly still sleeping soundly.
Two more times the voice commanded her to get her baby. The third time she listened.
“Wiping her hands on her apron as she went, she stooped down over the tub and lovingly took her sleeping baby in her arms. At almost the same instant, she heard a noise like thunder and, looking up, saw a huge log crashing down the mountainside, taking trees, rocks, and everything else in its path. She clutched the baby and ran. . .. Little Polly’s life had been preserved for a purpose she was certain.”
Without a doubt, Polly’s life had been preserved for many purposes. She grew up in Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, and evidenced a gift for healing from a young age.
Finally, one of the community leaders told her dad that he should send her to nursing school, so he paid for her education at the LDS Nursing School in Salt Lake City where she graduated with an RN degree.
She resisted, though, when an advisor encouraged her to stay another six months to become a nurse midwife. Finally, she capitulated, and that set the trajectory for the rest of her life.
The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) had ramped up by the time she returned to the colonies in 1912. She, her dad, and her sister, who had been attending BYU, undertook the dangerous journey, in Ruth’s words, “through the northern Chihuahuan mesquite desert infested with revolutionary bandits.”
When the rebels rode up on them, they demanded their horses, their money, and soon, the father feared, the two beautiful young girls, but when Pancho Villa arrived later, he apologized for his men and threatened death by firing squad if any molested the little party. Then, he remounted “his beautifully adorned horse” and disappeared into the night.
However, the conflict remained so volatile that after they arrived safely home, Polly’s father bought his five daughters pearl-handled pistols and instructed them to lock themselves in a closet and shoot themselves if soldiers broke down the door.
When soldiers did come to their home, they brought a wounded comrade and demanded that Polly heal him. If he died, they said, they would kill the entire family. Even with so much at stake, Polly treated his wounds, and the soldier, as well as her family, lived.
After the conflict calmed down a little, Polly worked in Colonia Juarez for the next 25 years delivering babies, and, as the only medical professional in the area, treating numerous other maladies.
The native Mexicans, who called her la doctora, would come to her gate at night and call for her, “Pow-oo-lee.” Because she had bad knees and couldn’t walk far, they brought a horse or donkey for her to ride sidesaddle on.
Although she spoke only rudimentary Spanish, she never refused to go with anyone even when she didn’t know them. She was often gone two or three days, relying on the new father, who often celebrated his child’s birth with liberal libations, to take her home.
She then returned to care for the mother and baby for ten more days. She never charged anyone for her services, but sometimes the fathers would bring wood or chickens in payment.
Polly, who continued to deliver babies wherever she lived until she was 82 years old, had large, beautiful, compassionate hands.
I now wear her garnet ring on my middle finger. I can only hope the ring somehow magically, mystically imparts a fragment of her courage and compassion to my own hands.