It had been rattling around in my mother’s jewellery box for decades when I asked her if I could have it. She handed it over with hardly a thought. It’s her high school class ring, a typically American school-days memento and gift from my father, in 1960, her boyfriend. He was attending university around the corner from her childhood home in Dayton, Ohio, a middle-sized city in America’s heartland. My dad was pals and classmates with my mom’s oldest brother. She was simply the kid sister of a mate, but when the little girl grew into a young woman and was about to graduate from high school, my dad, the slightly older college boy, wooed her by making sure she had a high school class ring. I know it’s not something my grandparents would have bought for their striking but cash-strapped daughter. My grandparents would have considered it a frivolous expense, unnecessary, even silly in its sentimentality. But I know my mom loved it back then. I know my mom.
A few years after high school, Barbara Ann would marry Michael and in 1964 they would welcome into the world a baby girl. For 20 years they would work together to make a family; another daughter and a son would follow, along with mortgages, cars, vacations, a dog, a small boat and countless friends, jobs, successes and disappointments. But with all the trappings of family, health and good looks, Barbara Ann and Michael’s marriage failed.
Together they helmed a messy, emotional, even destructive divorce. A ring – all but forgotten at the bottom of a box – is one of the few testaments to a time when they were young and in love. Chunky but nicely worn, the ring fits my pinky perfectly. It’s a tacit reminder that it’s possible to be over 50 and smooth.
My childhood was happy and carefree. I was 18-years-old before my parents set out to divorce. But trying to construct a single, unblemished memory of the two people who made me is tricky. They’ve been apart longer than they were married, rarely speak, and have few civil words for one another but together they’re still my parents. I now live far away from the Midwestern American heartland they both call home. I don’t see either of them nearly enough and almost never together. So with this ring, I occasionally imagine the day my handsome, awkward father gave my stylish, lively mother a little circle of gold. I’m reminded that I’m part of a trio, that while broken, ensures I’m relatively smooth.
– Anmarie Bowler, Ryde
Brevity 