Realwomen.co.nz

I have to back up many years now to tell a story about when my husband and I got married. We were engaged, and were planning a wedding in June. I had an engagement ring, and we had set the date, when he got draft papers. This was 1964, Viet Nam. My husband is 5 months younger than I am. At that time, it was legal for women to marry at 18 but men had to be 21. We were both 20. He and I decided that in order to stop the draft, we needed to get married immediately. So dh and I along with his mother went down to city hall in Chicago and got married, then continued with our wedding plans. When we went downtown dh suddenly realized he didn't have a wedding ring to put on my finger during the ceremony, so his mother gave him a ring of hers. This ring was part of a set and had matching earrings. It was gold with beautiful blue aquamarine stones in it. Her brother had brought the set back from Germany for her after World War ll.

So we were all set, we had the marriage license, the ring, and his mother. (nevermind) It turned our world upside down. Suddenly, we were married, but not married. We didn't tell anyone. I went home, he went home. We just carried on as usual, finalizing our wedding plans.

Years passed, we got married in church, my parents never found out. By then, everyone except my parents knew we had been married for four months by the time we walked down the aisle. Even the priest who married us in church knew. But this is not the reason for my story.

Let's get back to my son and his football career in grammer school. At the end of every season, all the town teams would gather at one huge facility and have a banquet. The Football Banquet. It was a big deal. Speeches and trophies, all the parents, all the football players, all the cheerleaders. There were hundreds of people involved.

Since my son was our first born, we really didn't know many people that were attending the banquet, except for the parents that we may have chatted with on the sidelines during the games. We were assigned a table like you might at a wedding reception. We went and sat down at this large, round table for twelve and proceeded to introduce outselves to everyone. I did know one couple at our table, the rest were pretty much strangers. We all had dinner, and chatted and were waiting for the speeches and trophies to be awarded when I looked up and noticed that the woman sitting across the table from me, a woman whom I had only that day introduced myself to, was wearing my gold and aquamarine ring! The exact ring dh's mother had given him to give to me on our FIRST wedding day! I was so taken back. I knew there could only be one. As far as I knew, it was in my jewelry box at home. I just blurted out, "Oh my gosh, you're wearing my ring! Where did you get that ring?"

Startled, she looked up and said, "Oh, here." She took if off, half stood and handed it across the table to me. I had to half stand too, as the table was so vast, and I took it from her. She said, "My daughter found it at the park." I said, "At the park? What park? Where do you live?" As it turned out, she lived across the street and two blocks down from us. We lived two and a half blocks from the park and they lived a just a block from the park. We determined that my daughter must have gone into my jewelry box, taken the ring out, and worn it to the park. Not fitting her, she dropped and lost it, and never said a word about it. I didn't even know it was missing!

What are the chances of something like that happening? Maureen, the gal who was wearing the ring, and I became very close friends after that. We laughed about that story many times over the years.

Comments (2)