For my birthday, I went to the jeweler and had him take a 2.5 millimeter piece out of my great-grandmother’s wedding ring. Not only has a bit of worth been removed— 2.5mm x 2.5mm x 10mm of gold is a very large flake— but a bit of my mother’s mother’s mother has been removed. It didn’t have to be this way.

I first went to the jeweler this past July, before I was to be married, because the ring was slightly too small for me. He stretched it. And stretched it. And stretched it. I cannot say why he stretched it so much. He’s the fanciest jeweler in Burlington. In general, I believe he knows what he is doing. But he made the ring so that it was too big to wear. Even in the hottest weather, it simply fell off my finger. It took me so long to go back because the thought of cutting a part from the ring turned my stomach. Now it is cut. Now I have a scrap of gold that I don’t know what to do with and a ring that will be slightly too small in the summer months. But I do have a ring that I can wear right now, today. I like the way it feels. I like the way it fits. I like the bond it symbolizes. I like the family it remembers. Although it is not as fat and heavy as it once was, it is still a big, fat, heavy ring. Now it is my wedding band.