Rings

When Lala and I got married, we did it on the cheap, as we do most things. Our friends provided the food for the wedding, and people pooled their photos for our album. But a few weeks before the big day, we still hadn't come up with the funds for rings, and we were just going to go somewhere and buy cheap bands -- we weren't too concerned.

I was talking to my mother about this, and she protested, "Oh, no, I have a envelope of old family rings, I'll send it to you and you can choose two you like."

I was moved by this, as was Lala, and when we got the envelope, we tried on all the bands at our dining room table. Each was marked with a little flag of paper with a name. The one I loved the most was marked Wilson, and Lala's was labeled Ashcroft.

I couldn't quite work out who the rings had belonged to, so I called Mom. She laughed and said they'd both belonged to her mother. I'd chosen her mother's second wedding ring -- the one she'd worn when she'd married George, the man I'd always known as Grandpa. But Lala had chosen the ring Grandma had worn when she'd married my mother's father. The widow's ring.

Lala's first wife died of cancer. Lala is a widow.

So now we both wear the same woman's rings, rings of love, rings that symbolized happy marriages. And Lala wears the widow's ring.