The Ruby Ring.- {re-written}

Once when I was a little girl, I tried on my nanny's ruby ring. I had chubby fingers, even then, and the ring became stuck on my finger. We tried butter, soap, you name it. Nothing worked.

We eventualy resorted to going to the emergency room at the hospital, and having the ring cut off.This is an aspect of the story which we re-tell, with humour, to my own children now.

This became another chapter in what would become the family legend of the ruby ring, and how I was to someday inherit it. I looked forward to becoming the "keeper of the ring", and the symbolic matriarch of the family.

The story began at the time of my birth, when my nanny apparantly told my mother," With all that dark hair, red is sure to be her most flattering colour, so this baby will have my lovely red, ruby ring, the one your dad gave me during the war, to serve as a wedding ring." She then retold a most amazing tale.

Nanny had left her home in Belgium, and fled to England. She had taken a job at a fish and chip shop, where she had met my Grandfather, a Canadian soldier. They soon married, and after the war, returned to Canada together.

My nanny became the most important figure in my life, as both my parent worked. She was the one who was always there for my sister and I.

Through the years, I was reminded many times of the ring,which would some day be mine. To me, it came to symbolize my bond with my maternal Grandmother, and my place within my own family. I would wear the ring with pride, I told myself, and tell all those who commented on it about the history. The idea of wearing the ring appealed to me very much.

It is many years later now, Nanny is very ill, and I find myself wishing that the transfer of the ring could be indefinitely postponed.

Wendy Atkinson.