Wednesday, June 18, 2008

DEB's Wedding Ring

Shortly after DEB came home from the rehab facility, her wedding ring went missing. It was a lovely platinum band set with a row of diamonds, and she clearly took it off and hid it somewhere. She hid it so well it hasn't turned up, and we're sadly suspecting she wrapped in a tissue and discarded it.

What she wears today is a lightweight, diamond-cut, 14K band that she purchased on sale at K-Mart a good ten years ago. I'm not quite sure why she bought it, but I remember helping her pick it out. I think her reasons had something to do with not feeling secure wearing her platinum & diamond wedding ring to some place. It might have been a long flight to visit her daughter or some such thing. Whatever the reason, she bought the ring, wore it a week, and relegated it to the bottom of her jewelry box.

She sits at my kitchen table, twiddling the ring around her finger, and she tells fantastic tales about its origins.

It was once a baby's bracelet, sized down to fit her finger. She describes in detail how she watched a machine make this happen.

It was given to her by a jeweler as a "thank you" for courier work she did in her teens.

Her first husband shipped it to her during his WWII duty in Burma and describes how it almost didn't arrive with censored mail and rigors of shipping something into the U. S. from overseas.

Even more bizarre is how these tales morph into one another over the course of twenty minutes. It makes me wonder what truthful bits of her past are tied to the stories she attaches to a K-Mart ring.

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