The Column: Rattled by a lost wedding band
I lost my wedding ring.
How, I don’t know.
For nearly six decades, I barely took it off.
Then my hands got dry and itchy, one of the annoying things to expect at this time of life, like finding yourself in the clothes closet with a can opener and no idea what is supposed to happen next, or getting home from the mall to discover you’ve been shopping while wearing two baseball caps.
Once in a while, I would slip the ring over a craggy knuckle and put it next to me so my finger could breathe. I checked occasionally to make sure I hadn’t moved it to some brilliant hiding place I wouldn’t be able to recall even if threatened with enhanced interrogation.
My wife, Wink, and I bought the ring on Broadway — that’s Broadway in the college town of Columbia, Missouri, where we two East Coast kids were going to school and preparing to get married, broke but brave.
It was white gold — gold came in two colors? — and, at the little downtown jewelry shop, cost $18 in spring 1963. That’s the price I recall. Certainly, the ring demanded no more than $25 because I would have had to settle for the paper band around one of my father’s Dutch Masters cigars.
OK, let’s pause for a moment.
Anyone thinking, “I’m going to keep reading but only because he’ll find the ring and I want to know what dopey thing he did with it” — you may be excused. For surprise endings and literary excellence, let me suggest the work of O. Henry.
In any case, there I was stewing because the ring, purchased long ago in Missouri, of all places — was gone.
My voice wobbled when I told Wink.
“Can’t find the ring,” I said. “Sorry.”
"Don't worry," said Wink. "We're still married."
Did I perceive the slightest hint of, oh, wistfulness in her voice? The faintest hint of Wink wondering what would have happened had she eloped with her old New Jersey boyfriend, Bucky, now a lawyer in Southern California, who called out of the blue a few years ago, to, you know, just “catch up”? Was she imagining herself drinking mojitos on the deck of a sailboat off Santa Catalina Island and not heading to Stop & Shop in our 13-year-old Subaru?
Quickly evaluating risk and benefit, I did not ask.
“We’ll get another ring,” Wink said at dinner. “Eat up. Your burrito looks unhappy.”
I took comfort from her soothing tone. Would a wife worry about the well-being of her husband’s bean burrito while considering a red-eye for the coast?
This is all about those familiar favorites, separation, loss and mortality. I get it. And how. Even in sleep.
Writing instructors tell students to avoid recalling dreams because who cares if you woke in a sweat thinking you fell off a tightrope crossing Niagara Falls only to be saved by your old Lutheran minister dressed as Captain Marvel.
Still, I think it’s worth mentioning that, adrift in slumber, I see Wink, gay, carefree and, I’m afraid, very much the object of desire. She is being pursued by many suitors and — sigh — not exactly complaining.
Often, she appears, smashing in a summer dress, chatting easily on a sun-swept veranda with some guy who looks like Liam Neeson or George Clooney or a younger version of Robert Redford, the unwrinkled “Sundance Kid” edition.
Off to the side, I stand, seriously undone. Wink spots me. I wave. Our eyes meet. She goes back to Sundance.
Who hasn’t imagined being overlooked and out-of-date?
“Isn’t that what’s his name?”
“Yeah, maybe. Why’s he wearing two baseball caps?”
Sometimes I get spooked. Wink remains calm.
“Doesn’t Redford live in Utah?” she says after I mention my dreams. “No chance.”
Phew, right?
And the ring? Still missing after two years, sad to report.
But we’re out shopping again now that virus numbers are better and soon will be looking for a replacement — something simple in white gold.
It will set us back more than $18, I suppose, and maybe $25.
“Fifty-nine years,” says Wink. “Break the bank.”
Been a long time since Missouri, we whisper to one another but, still, not long enough.
