Wedding Band

Posted on May 5, 2003 in Book of Days Travels - Past

Note: This is twentieth in a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.

Today’s topic: Wearing that ring….

When I went to former Yugoslavia in 1992, I arrived with my wedding ring on my left hand. Three months later, my wife arrived. I had it on my other hand. “Move your ring to the right hand,” I told her. “People here put it there, not here.”

It was no lie. I spent the first half of that summer confused. Why didn’t women respect the ring? On my left hand, where it buttressed the walls of the sacred institution of marriage in America, it meant nothing to the Croats and the Serbs that I met in my travels. One day, I held it up. “Does nobody see this?” “What is it?” “It’s a wedding ring!” “It’s a wedding ring? Why are you wearing it there?”

And so I moved it. The first thing that I told Lynn after I said “I’m glad to see you” and “How was the train ride?” was “Move the ring to this finger.” I didn’t want any more mistakes.

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