Give me a ring

I was in a shop, an old, dark shop which seemed to be a cross between a jewellery store and an antique store. There were dark wood display cases with glass sides and tops showing all sorts of rings, necklaces, and the like, as well as small sculptures and knickknacks, all made out of precious and semi-precious stones. There were jade eagles, and green stone spheres and lots of really neat stuff there. The owner/proprietor was an old person, with some weight on them who had run the place for 50 years at least. It was their passion and their hobby as much as their job.

E was in the store with me, and we were there to pick out her ring, which I was buying for her. It wasn’t just any ring, either; it was her wedding ring. I was letting her pick out what she liked and then I’d pay for it. She was pouring over the cases, seeing what she liked the looks of. It finally came down to three different rings, which really all looked very similar, except that the third one was extremely bright and shiny. The main detail I remember about the rings was the stones. They were large, and oval, with a very pretty shape and color to them. I knew they were diamonds (probably about 3 caret in reality!) but they had the color of water sapphires. The owner explained that the last one had “brilliantine” in it or on it or something, and that is what made it shinier and ‘better’ than the others. E didn’t want that one at first, I think she thought it was too expensive, but the shine finally got her and so she picked that one.

I sat on a stool near the central counter and she stood in front of me, as the owner was finishing up our purchase. My arms were around her waist as she leaned on the counter admiring her ring. I asked her if she wanted me to hold onto it until “it was time”, since she was going home to her husband and I thought it might be a bad thing if he were to see the (wedding) ring I had given her.

“Oh no,” she said. “I’ll hold on to it. No problem.”

So then we admired it a bit more, though I never actually saw it on her hand.

Then it was no longer the store, but now a house, similar to the store in age and the fact that it was filled with antiques, dark wood and the like, but it was also my A’s daycare. E and I were there to pick him up at the end of the day but he didn’t want to go. He was the last kid there and I was having trouble rounding him up to go. I got his boots on but then couldn’t find mine, which were lost in the jumble of shoes and boots at the front door (which looked liked Kevin’s front door in Keswick). It was then that I realized I couldn’t find my socks either. Finally I did find my boots and there were my socks, stuffed inside them.

By this time the poor lady who ran the daycare (and she was old too) was exhausted, and it was like 2am or something crazy like that. E and I were rounding up A to go, when I noticed in the mirror that I was going bald. I had a big bald patch from my bangs to the crown of my head, with just a few wispy white hairs, but other than that my head was as normal. My bangs were swept up really high though, and they’d hidden the bald patch so I hadn’t even seen it until now. It didn’t worry me so much as surprise me that it was there. And I thought that the big high brown bangs looked kinda silly.

As we were shovelling little A out the door to head to the car, the poor daycare lady was laid out on the sofa, glad to see the back of us...well A mostly...