My Wedding Ring

When Babe and I were in the process of planning our wedding, there came a day to pick out the rings.  Her ring was relatively easy to choose, because it was part of a set, the other ring being of course the engagement ring that she was already wearing.  Mine was a bit more difficult.  For young men, the process of choosing a ring is sometimes complicated.  For me, I wanted a ring that blended with my life and my personality.  If you look at a man's wedding ring, you generally can tell a lot about him.  I have a friend who has one that is titanium.  Very heavy, yet very sleek looking. The edges are sort of tapered and faceted, and look modern and classy.  I have another friend who has a very basic, but very handsome simple gold band.  If you were to commit yourself to it, and look intentionally at the rings that men wear, I think you would understand the corollary that I am trying to examine.

The other thing that you might get a glimpse of would be the roads that those rings have taken.  The shiny and new rings will often belong to people who are somewhat newly married.  Men like my father, who have been married a very long time, will often have replaced the original ring one or more times, and yet the ring they wear will often have some scratches and some natural polishing and wear showing. Because a man will usually wear his ring at all times, it is exposed to whatever the hand wearing it is exposed to. A ring belonging to a gardener will often be softly polished by the abrasive dirt it finds itself in.

My favorite are the ones that have been worn for a very long time.  Those rings are usually in a condition similar to the bearer.  I recently saw a wedding ring that a gentleman had been wearing for 50 years.  That amount of time, combined with faithful polishing, had created a piece of jewelry that was polished and patinad in a way that only time can do.  I imagine that this man's marriage shows the same amount of luster and history.

Soon, we will celebrate ten years of marriage.  And with that, I examined my own ring today.  My ring is a fairly simple gold band, that band is wrapped with a narrower platinum band.  When it was new, and still polished, the luster of the gold was such that it was hard to tell that the two metals were a different color.  For the first several years that we were married, I made a point to have it polished every so often at the jewelry store.

But, like any relationship; after a while the ring began to age a little.  I havent had it polished in quite a while. Thinking about that is what prompted this essay. It has developed scratches, dings, and a very large dent.  Quite a few years ago now I had to jumpstart a truck.  Remember what I said about the resemblance of the ring to the bearer?  Well, the hood of the truck had quite a bit of snow on it, and while I was removing the battery box after getting it running, the hood slammed down.  It could not have hit my ring more squarely.  Later that evening, I was telling the story, and went to pull the ring off, only to discover that the ring had been fairly crushed, and was now oblong to the point that it would not slide off of my finger. What was odd was that not only had i felt no pain when the hood came down, but there was absolutely no damage to my finger.

Yes, I believe that my wedding ring saved my finger from major injury.

SO, like any good mechanic would do, I used a few tools and did my best to make the thing round again.  And I wear it that way to this day.

I know a lot of people who take care of thier rings the same way that I did at first, Those guys are the ones who ask me now and then when I'm going to take mine in to be straightened out and repolished. They keep them in polished, shiny condition at all times.  They dont want anybody to ever see the ring looking less than perfect.

But my ring tells a story.  All in all, we have had a pretty good marriage.  I know a lot of people who have not made it this long.  We have had some struggles, we've seen some scratches in our rings, and we've even had a couple big dents over the years.  But over time, we have always managed to find a way to get things back into shape.  We are not the exact same shiny polished couple that we may have been, but each of those scratches, dings, and dents have had an impact on us.  To me, to polish the ring would be to deny the past.  It would mean a willingness to set aside some of those things that we have gotten through together.  It would almost make light of the struggle.  Babe and I have worked hard, and worked together over the last decade to be a team in things, to smooth out the bumps in the road.  To polish the ring to me is pretending that some of the things that have happened to us as a couple were not important.

One of the best things about metal is what is called Tempering.  By inducing stress into a metal, through heat or through force, or some combination of the two, the metal itself becomes stronger.  My ring was tempered by the force of the truck-hood.  In much the same way, struggle and difficulty can temper a relationship.

You have heard in these posts about some of the things that Babe and I have been through together.  Each of these has caused us stress as a couple, and tempered our relationship.  Each of these things has been very important to our relationship on a very basic level.  And I wouldn't dare try to forget about them.

I think that it is important to remember with pride those things that a couple has conquered.  Those times when things weren't necessarily fun.  The sad things that have happened.  The financial struggles.  Times when you didn't like your job, or didnt have a job.  I'm not talking about problems in a relationship here, but rather those problems that your relationship has allowed you to overcome together.

I'm still not sure if I will go get my ring polished or not.  Part of me says that it would be a way to close a chapter and open another.  Part of me says that it is just fine the way it is. Part of me says I should do what any married man would do and ask my wife.