These are not new rings. Â Mary and Sonia, our wonderful next-door neighbors, have been together for 27 years, and gave these rings to each other many years ago. This year in Minnesota they are able to be legal married. To mark this event in their lives, they asked me to set diamonds into their rings and inscribe the date alongside the date already inscribed from when they exchanged them. I believe it was 1982.
As I worked to set the stones, the long history of these rings was evident. The bands showed all of the signs of the years they have been worn and represented Mary and Sonia’s lives together. Â They had been sized, bent out of round, dinged and scratched. They had been loved, repaired (even by me, several years ago, after Mary bashed her hand in a gardening incident) and taken care of.
At their wedding, they pulled me aside to introduce me to Mary’s sister, who had the wedding band their mother had worn, but had been passed on after her death a couple of years ago. We were all amazed that without having seen this older ring before, it was nearly an exact match to these rings.
Congratulations to a beautiful couple.