BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
In July 1981, Newsweek magazine ran a cover story of billowing ivory dresses, a Cinderella-like carriage and honor guards with crossed sabers. They called it ''The Wedding of the Summer.''
I read it with a smile of secret disagreement. I had been married just 39 days earlier, with toaster ovens as gifts, a Plymouth Horizon as a carriage and a husband far more handsome than the Prince.
To me, my wedding would always be The Wedding of that summer. Newsweek's sweeping statement seemed unfair.
A year later, the Prince and Princess were beaming on the nightly news, holding a rosy-cheeked newborn prince. I remember stopping for a moment in the living room of our ancient second-floor apartment, so drafty in winter that we could see our breath in the kitchen. A plant once froze to death in the ''parlor.''
We were a young working couple, paying off college loans and saving for a house. It would be a long time until we could afford a queen-sized bed, let alone a little prince. I sighed a more than slightly envious sigh, and wished life were a little more fair.
In 1990, as we were starting off as parents, the Windsors were sending Prince William off to private school. In the intervening years, we had seen the family skiing in Switzerland and vacationing in the Greek Isles. They were always tan, well-dressed and rested while we were figuring out how to balance night feedings with two full-time jobs.
I wished them every happiness - and they looked pretty happy to bleary-eyed me - but I also wished my own family could travel, heck, to California, and that we could do better by our daughter. We worked so hard. We cared so much. It didn't seem quite fair.
Life without obligations
Then a few years later, it hit me that every fall Princess Diana had to send her child off to boarding school, seeing him only holidays and occasional weekends. Every afternoon, my own child flew off her bus and into my arms. And while Diana's son would one day be king, my daughter would one day be anything she wanted to be.
Maybe not queen, but that was pretty far down on her list.
Suddenly life seemed unfair but, as the Brits say, the other way round. The small, ordinary moments of daily family life were riches indeed, and I had been given more than my share.
And, while my family didn't own yachts and nothing in my closet went with a tiara, we did have that delicious thing called freedom.
We could tumble our way down Perfect North slopes with no one videotaping it. My daughter could pout in public with no public concerns about effects on the lineage. We could hit Disney World without an entourage, and stop for burgers at any McDonald's. There was always room for public displays of affection and private moments of petulance.
Until last week, I never realized how grateful I was for simply being allowed to be human.
Savor precious moments
In recent years, I still took notice of Princess Diana, but my life was full and happy and I needed nothing with which to compare it.
I felt only sorrow as the Wedding of the Summer turned into one more tawdry and sensational divorce. I ached for her sons, who probably would have given up all their titles just for Mum and Papa to love each other.
And then last week, this beautiful, graceful, rich, royal woman was gone so tragically, and I, this ordinary woman, had life, health, love and a long-awaited baby coming in a matter of days.
And I wished that life had treated Diana better.
News accounts are full of the lessons of this tragedy. That the paparazzi have gone too far, the monarchy has cared too little, the public has demanded too much. That not even princesses are safe from others' poor judgment.
But there is one other great lesson.
That all of us are given precious moments, and the best of them have nothing to do with titles and celebrity.
And that a life lived with love, peace, hard work and devotion is the most noble thing to be found.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati 45202 or fax at 768-8340.
RAMSEY ARCHIVE