“Where’s your wedding band?” my daughter Maggie asked, sitting on the couch with her 7-week-old daughter in our small TV room.
I sat in the once golden armchair and looked at her, and then my hand. She was right; my wedding band wasn’t there.
I looked up. “Oh my God,” I said. “I know exactly where it is.”
I never take my wedding band off. I take the other three rings I wear daily off as one when I go swimming or go to sleep. My engagement ring and the two guard rings—one that Matt gave me after our first baby, Maggie, was born, and another I whined for—were a package. They were essentially one ring.
When my daughters were little, they liked to play with my rings, but I never let them play with my wedding ring. It was part of me, like a fingernail or a freckle. It was me.
Earlier that day, I had gone in for an MRI for my back. I’d been in significant pain for several months and couldn’t walk long distances anymore because my leg hurt. I couldn’t go upstairs easily and couldn’t trust my leg.
The tech brought me to the dressing room, told me where to put my clothes, and that no metal was allowed in the MRI. I had to leave my rings and earrings behind. I took everything off, including my mother’s gold watch I got when she died 20 years ago, and put them in one of my sneakers. I hadn’t come prepared with a purse.
I walked into the room with the big white tunnel of a machine.
“Okay, lie down. Here’s a ball for you to squeeze if you need me when you’re in the machine. What kind of music do you want to listen to?” asked one of the techs.
My breathing was ratcheting up. My heart was beating faster.
I flipped through artists. “Carole King?” I asked.
“Sure, and would you like other music like hers? We can play the Carole King station.”
“Yes.” I gave the thumbs up.
“Ready?”
“No. I can’t do this. I’m so sorry. I just can’t.” I sat up.
“It’s okay.”
I started crying. Tears streamed. “My daughter had emergency gallbladder surgery recently and she just had a baby and I’m sorry, I just can’t.”
The two techs couldn’t have been kinder.
I went back to the dressing room and put my clothes and jewelry back on.
In the TV room later, I realized, I had put the three rings on, but left my wedding band behind.
How was I going to tell Matt? I didn’t want him to think I was careless. With my ring, or my love.
Unlike the horror I was expecting, he took my mistake in stride. “I know you love me,” he said, “and if you’re going to lose a ring, that’s the least expensive one to replace.” It was a simple gold band—no diamonds—just engraved with our initials, MMB and MDBB, and the date 9/10/88.
“But it’s the one you put on my finger,” I said.
“It just shows how stressed you are,” he said. “It’s okay.” I had watched my daughter labor at home, then drove her and her husband to the hospital and then, I learned later, that the birthing had been difficult, all of which was hard on me, her mom, and a new grandmother. Caring for her, the baby, and her husband in our house was fun, but also work.
I made calls to the MRI place. No one had turned in a ring,
In class the next day, I told my students. In unison they said, “Oh no,” and sighed.
A few days later, I went back in to try the MRI again. This time, I had taken a muscle relaxant, diazepam, beforehand, and Matt drove me and played on his phone while he waited for me in an armchair outside the MRI room. I listened to Carole King and put a sleep mask over my eyes. I got through the MRI.
We gave the receptionist my phone number in case the ring showed up. I wasn’t optimistic. I moved my rings around on my finger to minimize the loss I felt.
A full week later, my phone rang at 7 a.m. I didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
“Hi, this is Michelle from the MRI office on Concord Ave.”
I held my breath.
“They found your ring.”
“Oh my god. Really?”
“Yes, in the laundry. I came in this morning and there was a note on my desk, but I didn’t think I could call you at six.”
She could have. I would have taken it.
“Thank you, thank you,” I repeated. “This makes me so happy. Thank you. I can’t come in because I teach all day. But my husband will get it.”
At school, a few hours later, I told my students. “They found my ring.”
Sixteen voices in unison, said “Ahhhhh”.
When I got home from work. I said, “Matt, did you get my ring?”
He came out of the TV room and picked it up from a plate on the dining room table.
“Wait,” he said, “I have to put it on. The receptionist told me.”
I slid the other rings off my finger and Matt slid my wedding band back on, 38 years after the first time. Maybe it wasn’t as romantic. I wasn’t dressed in a white wedding gown. There weren’t any flowers. But in my teaching outfit of pants and a sweater, the moment was just as significant. It bore the testament of time.
Morgan Baker is the author of the award-winning memoir Emptying the Nest: Getting Better at Goodbyes. She teaches at Emerson College and virtually. She is the managing editor of The Bucket. She lives with her husband, four dogs, and her daughter, son-in-law and grandbaby in Cambridge MA. Find her at www.bymorganbaker.com.
Object-ives features flash nonfiction essays of 500-999 words on the possessions we can’t stop thinking about.
Recommended reading on possessions:
“A Reckoning in October” by Mary Roblyn, Writer, Interrupted
“Time Is A Thief And I Keep Losing My Wallet” by Adreanna Limbach, The Laundry
“Clutter Practice” by Katherine May, The Clearing
“You don’t use it. So why can’t you get rid of it?” by The Tidy Home
What a satisfying ending. Ahhhh.
Just lovely. Hope the MRI results bring as much physical relief as you felt when the receptionist called.