IGBOK - (It’s Gonna Be OK!)

 

A few years ago, in September, I broke my ring finger helping a one-armed man change a tire on his camper trailer on the side of the interstate. Seriously.

For over a month, I couldn’t get my wedding ring off because of the swelling in the knuckle right above it. Once the swelling went down enough that I could get the ring off and on with some effort (mostly for working out at the gym), I decided to switch things around a bit.

For Valentine’s Day after our 30th anniversary, Debbie had given me a new ring and I wore it on my right ring finger. It is a couple of sizes bigger, so I decided to switch the two rings. The new ring went on/off the swollen knuckle just fine and the wedding ring fit pretty nicely on my right pinkie, but just a little loose.

Around noon on the day after Thanksgiving, I noticed that my wedding ring was gone. I had no idea when/where I might have lost it. I searched everywhere. I do the majority of the cooking in our house, by choice. I love to cook! When I am cooking a lot, I wash my hands a lot, and usually dry them with a paper towel. I assumed that sometime during the day it must have slipped it off when drying my hands. The trash pickup had already occurred and the bags of trash from Thanksgiving were long gone. I was devastated! Debbie said it wasn’t a big deal because I still had the new ring that she had given me and had been wearing like a wedding ring anyway.

One Friday evening in the Spring, after work, I went out to work on cleaning up our back yard. We had had almost 30 inches of rain already that year, so the yard looked terrible. There were a few piles of leaves that had been raked up in November and December that had just sat there with all of the rain. Since they had had a few days to dry, I decided it was time to dispose of them. I was burning the dry leaves on top  and leaving the wet ones underneath to dry some in the sun before bagging them up.

There was a pile just off the steps of the back porch. While I was raking and picking up those leaves to burn, I saw a little glint of something on the ground at the bottom of the pile. I moved the leaves aside and there was my wedding ring!!! I remember our granddaughter playing in that pile of leaves at Thanksgiving. I guess in playing with her at some point, the ring slipped off and spent the winter there.

So… take a deep breath. It’s gonna be ok!