The hand-me-down ring

I'm kinda sentimental. Everything, it seems to me, has a soul or a story, and I get attached to it. We bought our house going on 30 years ago and figured it was our starter home and we'd eventually buy or build something else. We got close a time or two, but then I'd imagine our house with another family in it, walking on floors we'd refinished or painting over pencil marks where we'd measured our girls growth and I'd get teary at the thought. We never did move. Outdoorman still drives our now antique Suburban (Longhorn burnt orange) because we bought it during our Texas ranch days when the girls were babies and life was simpler and well, you can see the pattern. Jewelry that tells a family story? I can cry at just the thought.

When Outdoorman proposed marriage in December of 1982, my mom offered her wedding ring to us. I'd always loved playing with mom's rings...mostly during church. I'd try them on, seeing which finger they'd come closest to fitting. Her wedding ring was special because with young eyes I could still see the fading initials OLM to MEH and the more recent WRM to DLR. Mom told me that when she and daddy were getting married in 1956 in Appalachia, Virginia, daddy's mother offered her own wedding ring and gave it to daddy to put on mom's hand. So there began the tradition...to pass the ring down to the next generation, while still alive and married, at the very beginning...the wedding...just as my grandmother did.

April 28, 1956. First Baptist Church in Appalachia, Virginia

May 6, 1983. Kobe Baptist Church in Kobe, Japan.

I was thrilled to receive it. It always connected me to my grandmother even though she died before I was born. It was the only jewelry I never took off. I'm sentimental that way. When Fisherman came to ask us for Middle Girl's hand in marriage (such a lovely Southern tradition) and I saw the ring he planned to give her I just knew my hand-me-down ring was meant to go with it.

As wedding day approached I got more and more sentimental. I mentioned to Outdoorman how I'd really miss the ring, and then realized my mom must've felt that way when she gave it to me. He pointed out that it's usually that way...hindsight and wisdom or something like that. (He's pretty smart.) I even took pictures of my hand with it and without it just trying to get used to it. I got pretty sappy.

Oh, I knew it was the right thing to do, and I was happy to see the tradition continue. I guess the best word to describe it is bittersweet. I would (and do) miss it, but I think it's where my grandmother would have wanted it...on the finger of the next generation. The last moments I wore our ring were busy with wedding stuff.