My Mother's Ring

My mother’s wedding band was 99 kinds of gorgeous. It was a band of William Morris-y sort of flowers and vines stamped into silver and rimmed with gold.

I remember thinking it the most beautiful thing in the world when I was just a wee bairn. I’d sit next to her on our couch with my face pressed up against her hand so I could marvel at it’s organic swirls. I’d twirl it around her finger so I could gaze deeply at all sides.

My attraction to it never changed.

She and I always had a strained relationship. I had the balls on temerity to be born a girl not a boy and, to make matters worse, I was always an independently minded, go-your-own-way sort. She couldn’t relate and I was often left to my own devices.

Well after I left home she made an effort to get to know me, to build a bridge or three. We began to understand and appreciate each other. We made it to a better place.

One of the bits that she discovered was that we had very similar tastes in crafts -- jewelry, pottery and the like. She remembered that I loved the dinnerware from Stangl Pottery and sent me all that was left of what she and Pop bought.

And then she remembered that I was in love with her wedding ring. Even as an adult, I would take her hand, play with the band -- spinning it around while I studied the beautiful design.

Lucy told me that she would leave me the ring. When she died it would be mine.

WOW! This was huge. Not only was it a stunning circlet, it was a symbol of what was most important to her in this world. Pop. Their marriage.

Closest match. Found in a back street Florence artist's studio

Flash forward to mia madre’s last surgery at MGH. This was in the late ‘90s or early ‘00s  I think. She was having a meningioma removed from the front, the bow of her brain (I have one there too). All went well BUT, before being wheeled down to the OR she’d left her ring in a drawer next to her hospital bed.

It was gone by the time she was returned to the room and never found, never discovered, never returned.

Yeah, it’s just a thing but, for me, it represented all that she and I had in common -- art, craft and hearts full of big crazy love. It was a symbol of family history, of our peripatetic life, of beauty and survival.

I’ve never found anything like it nor do I have a pic of it. Maybe some day.