Marked

As a kid, I remember being fascinated by my parents' wedding bands. They're not anything fancy -- just relatively plain bands with a beveled edge. Mom said that when they'd married, the bevels were plated with white gold. But ever since I'd been old enough to remember, the bands were a uniform yellow gold. I would spin mom's ring around and around her finger, looking for a trace of the white that had once been there.

On the day I married Pukka, I carried my grandmothers' wedding bands. Both of them enjoyed more than fifty years of marriage. After all those years, their bands were worn so thin that I could've easily snapped either of them clean in half without hardly any effort. Such a simple thing -- the work of the day pitted against the relatively soft metal, wearing it own across time.

When Pukka and I were shopping for wedding rings, he asked the jeweler about the hardness of white gold. The jeweler admitted that gold was softer than some other metals relatively, but then point to the ring I was holding in my hand and said, "You're looking at at least a fifty year ring there."

That struck us both I think. We knew we were in this for the long haul, but no matter how you slice it, fifty years is a long time.

One year ago today Pukka first put that fifty year band on my finger. Since that day, both our rings have lost a little of their shine. They're marked with tiny scratches and dings; the things we've had our hands in for the past year have taken their toll. But they're still very much intact.

I'm looking forward to the day when our daughter spins my ring around my finger and asks in disbelief, "This used to be square?"