The Wedding Ring

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Single Parent Advice Articles and Blogs from Divorced Dads across America. Guest contributor, Scott Rigdon shares his Divorced Dad Diary Blog called, Wedding Ring…

SingleDad Diary Blog: Wedding Ring

This is the ring that I bought for the love of my life when I was in college. You don’t need to be an expert to see that it is an inexpensive piece of jewelry. At the time, I often gloated to my college buddies… Here I was this dirt poor country boy, driving a $100 car, racking up mountains of school loans, and I had stumbled into this amazing young woman who certainly seemed to love me for nothing more than me. I was all there was back then. As memory serves me, this ring cost in the range of $80. That was nearly 20 years ago.

Years later, after making it through college and landing that great job every dirt poor country boy dreams of, I took this very ring from whichever finger a lady wears a ring on when it’s just a decorative ring, and used it to propose marriage to that love. After waiting many years for me to do so, it was a quick sell- we were wed 11 days later, and this ring became once again repurposed as a wedding ring. Probably now worth, give or take, $80. Still.

Many more years passed and we both wore these inexpensive tokens (my wedding ring is of similar dollar value and history) and many times discussed buying ‘real’ wedding rings. Each time, the discussion ended with us wanting to keep our cheap old jewelry and spend that money on a vacation or home improvement for our adorable little farm house in the country. Ring, now, worth more or less… $80.

Skip ahead many years. For the purposes of this story, let’s just say lots of bad things happened, and to say the least, while I will probably always see that woman as the love of my life, I was clearly no longer the love of hers. Ring now in the red.

One day, the only lady who has been in my life since the divorce, came home from Kindergarten with this ring on a flimsy necklace around her flawless porcelain neck. I asked her where she got it, and she said her Mother told her she could have it. She seemed to understand that it was her wedding ring, but she was at that time 4 years old. I calculated a 93% probability of it being lost quickly, took a few last looks at it, and bid it farewell. I did tell Sophie I was glad she had it. I did not place any emphasis on her taking good care of it. She was 4. Ring now worth about $2.

In the past 5 years, it spent a lot of time in Sophie’s jewelry box. Even did a tour of duty on my desk, still on that flimsy necklace, hanging on my monitor, where Sophie left it one night, and I didn’t encourage her to move it. I was truly ok with whatever may have come of it. I felt it likely that the ring was placed in the care of a 4 year old with the intention that it would indeed be lost. It was not my ring, it was not my doing, and I was all along prepared to assure the true lady love of my life that it was ok when she inevitably lost the ring. Ring now worth maybe $11? Any good story is worth $11.

Three days ago, Sophie came bursting into the living room to exclaim, “The ring fits, Daddy!” And, indeed, it does! Her middle finger. Perfectly. She pranced around the house all evening, doing that thing women do when they have a new ring, as giddy as if she had just been proposed to. Very much in love with the ring. I truly don’t know where it had been hiding all that time. I had lost track of it when it disappeared from my monitor. Ring’s worth no longer able to be measured in dollars. The lady love of my life loves it. It now carries an indistinguishable flame through time.

Last night, this amazing 8 year old young lady came to me with a very sad story to go along with this newfound love for this very old ring. Apparently, she wore the ring to her other home, excited to report at that location that the ring fit… unfortunately, that news was not met with a positive response…

“You still have that piece of junk? I thought you lost that a long time ago! It’s worthless. If your Father had truly loved me, he would have bought me an expensive diamond, and maybe we would have stayed married! Don’t ever marry a man who can’t afford a decent ring!”

My little lady did not respond well to this, and apparently a very ugly argument followed, which, the way I understand it, Sophie won with her final sentence: “Love doesn’t have anything to do with money!” I was not there for this display, but I can’t tell you how much I wish I could have been a fly on the wall. Ring now forged with the heat of battle.

Not that anyone actually ‘wins’ an argument of that nature. When Sophie told me this story last night, she was obviously very upset, angry, emotional, sad, and honestly… just plain disappointed. She specifically asked me to write a story about it. I think she was asking me to write a story about the argument she had in her other home. While it was necessary to include that argument, I hope she likes the entirety of this story better.

Before we changed the subject, for the best of all our blood pressures, she said, “I don’t care what she thinks. It’s a beautiful ring and it was my Mother’s wedding ring, and it’s old and not perfect and I will always love it.”

I struggled for more than a full spin of the Earth (including, no less, a lengthy gaze into last night’s blue moon, I would not lie to you) to think of a way to write a happy story about such a sad situation. Turns out, all I had to do was write down all the things I knew Sophie would love to hear about the ring. I hope this story makes its way into the hands of whoever inherits the ring from her, because it is truly a testament to how long your Great Great Nana Sophie has been making the world a beautiful place.

Baby, who will be 9 in only days, that ring is perfectly ‘you’. It is rich with love stories, it has endured amazing odds against it, it was given with love to the relationship that created you, and now it has found the home it deserves. It is exactly where it belongs. It’s wrapped around the finger and heart of the one lady love of my life that truly deserves it, appreciates it, and will love it more than anyone else ever did, would, or could. You transformed this old ‘junk’ into amazingly rich family history. It is one million percent Sophie in every way.

Ring now priceless, immortal, and timeless.

Richard JaramilloRichard “RJ” Jaramillo, is the Founder of SingleDad.com,
a website and social media resource dedicated to single parenting and specifically for the newly divorced, re-married, widowed and single Father with children.
RJ is self employed, entrepreneur living in San Diego and a father of three children. The mission of SingleDad is to help the community of Single Parents
“Make Life Happen…Again!”

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Richard “RJ” Jaramillo, is the Founder of SingleDad.com, a website and social media resource dedicated to single parenting and specifically for the newly divorced, re-married, widowed and single Father with children. RJ is self employed, entrepreneur living in San Diego and a father of three children. The mission of SingleDad is to help the community of Single Parents “Make Life Happen…Again!”