Ah, the end of love month and in a leap year to boot. I’m thinking about wedding rings, though I’m no fan of the leap year tradition which make today the day when women can propose. Hardly a win, that, if it only comes round once every four years. Why can’t we just ask for what we want? They might say yes. The Spouse did, and wasn’t that lucky?
This month, I’ve acquired a new wedding ring and I’m finding it beautifully distracting. It belonged to my great-grandmother – my mother’s father’s mother – and but it might predate her, too. When my parents gave me the ring, they only passed on a few basic facts. I know that she was born in 1879 and married in 1903. That she had many sons and then, finally, a daughter. There are hallmarks inside the ring and, hoping to find out more, I’ve been doing a bit of digging. The first struggle was deciphering the marks themselves, but my keen-eyed daughter helped with that. When I told her that I must be getting old, she told me that if I were an ancient Briton, I’d be dead by now. By definition, I thought, but no. Just because your late-thirties are very old. So now I know. The whole exercise was very good for her math skills.
Every hallmarked item has a letter stamp which indicated the date and, based on that, we think that the ring either dates from 1913, an odd ten years after the marriage date, or 1812, which seems like a very long time ago indeed. The mystery might be solved if I take the ring to a well-informed jeweler who can identify the maker’s mark. Even Beangirl’s eyes couldn’t be confident about that part. Until we do, we live with questions.
I like the mystery of old rings. Probably the romantic in me. I like knowing and not knowing. Even if I knew the real date of the ring, there would still be so much I can’t know. My engagement and wedding rings carry mystery, too. My engagement ring belonged to the Spouse’s grandmother, who I never met, and we bought my wedding ring at a vintage clothing sale. So that’s three women, now, whose rings I wear. Without really knowing their stories, I am connected to their lives.
My new old ring is bright Aureolin gold and slightly oblong with wear. It sits comfortably on my finger, tinking pleasantly against my coffee cup. The band is wide enough to reflect my face, so I wonder about the other faces that it once reflected, other rooms, and other stories. But more that that, its bright shine makes me think of promises made and faithfully kept, of work that wearied and work that brought joy, and of the strange way that stories and mysteries come together unexpectedly. All that in a bit of old gold.
I once saw a hoard of ancient gold in a museum display case with a heap of old bracelets, their yellow a deep, worn goldenrod. One bracelet was set to the side, looking quite shiny and new. The accompanying note said that all the bracelets had been found in the same field, and could be dated to belong to the same source, but that one had been found many years before the rest. It had been worn by the daughter of the farmer, who then passed it to her own daughter, who had also worn it. Wearing it had made the gold had shine, Doesn’t that feels like a metaphor for kindness, perhaps, or love? Not everything wears out with use.
How’s that for a love month parable?
