As some young kids do, I liked to dress up and play pretend.  My grandma would let me put on her fancy shawls and wear her special evening bags; she had a limitless supply of beaded and tiled bags in all colors.  These were the ones she would take to “an affair.”  “Meri Darling, we’re going to an affair at the such-and-such” she would say. 

I would also go into my mom’s jewelry box and play with her jewelry.  I’d put on sparkly necklaces but there was only one ring that I dared to put on my finger – her wedding band to my father. It was soldered with his and because of that, the ring was pretty chunky. It was made of white gold, with thin lines running around it.  I always knew how special it was, an object that had such proximity to my dad.

When I got older, my mom trusted me to wear it. (It fit my small finger perfectly.) For almost thirty years, I took care of it. Because it was so thick, it was like wearing a brass knuckle – many times I accidentally knocked myself in the head. I never wore it to the beach. Or in the winter when I knew my hands would be cold and it might slip off.  It was one of my most valuable possessions.

Then one day, the worst thing I could have imagined happened. I lost the ring.  I can remember almost every detail of that evening. We went to dinner and a movie screening in Brooklyn, to see a film by Todd Solondz with a Q&A afterward. 

Sometime after the movie began, I felt something was off. My ring was missing. I had a full-on panic in the theater, checking in my pocket, inside my bag, in my coat, on the floor, between the seats of the theater.  I was a basket case. I made Andy leave the movie so we could go back to the restaurant and ask the staff there. I looked in the bathroom, and in the trash. But it was gone.   I remember being inconsolable. And I didn’t know how I was ever going to look my mom in the eye and tell her I lost the most precious thing she gave me.

When I did tell her, she reacted better than I was preparing for.  She accepted what happened, though I sensed her disappointment and that cut me deep, too. I still beat myself up for losing that ring.

And the movie stunk, too.