P365 Day 199: Ring, ring (ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring)

I don't wear much jewelry. OK, I'm sure by some standards, I wear a lot of jewelry, but not nearly as much as I once did. The pieces I wear all have personal meaning to me, and I never, ever take them off (well, except for my leather-banded watch, which comes off when I shower).

This is my eight-band puzzle ring (also known as a Turkish wedding ring). It is a wedding band but it's not my "real" wedding band, so I wear it on the ring finger of my right hand. Its symbolism — faithfulness — is important to me; the wearer cannot take it off without having to put it together again.



Actually, this ring has another happy memory tied to it, one from when I was an editor in Memphis. The first day I wore it to work, an admiring coworker told me she'd had a puzzle ring years ago.

"Take it off! I want to put it back together!" she told me.

"Are you sure you remember how? I mean, this is an eight-band ring, not four or six like most of them," I replied. I'd bought it for that reason, in fact; I wanted something different and more intricate than four or six bands.

"Sure I'm sure," she said.

So I took it off — carefully. I handed it to her gingerly, intact. And then she shook the damn thing into eight shiny, jangling rings. She promised to have it back to me in no time flat.

The day passed. I asked about it. She said she was still working on it. The next day passed. Finally, she handed it back to me and I congratulated her on putting it together. "Oh, I didn't put it back together. I couldn't figure it out, so I took it home so (her husband and son) could look at it ... but they couldn't figure it out either. So we looked at online instructions. Finally, I drove it to the jewelry store and had them put it back together for me. They asked if I wanted to weld it together so this wouldn't happen again."

I laughed. She'd spent money on putting it back together.

As you can see, there's now a string around the back. But I wore it loose for years — like I said, it was symbolic to me, and I wanted the authenticity of keeping it on all the time. I once made a masseuse work around it (and honestly didn't feel too guilty even though she balked). But there came a point — maybe it was my MRI scan, during which I had to remove all my jewelry (doctor's orders!) — that I realized, hey, maybe it's not such a bad idea for a back-up plan in case I have to take it off.

But that situation with my coworker taught me a good lesson about showing off my ring: The easiest answer is, "Sure, you can see it ... on my finger."