The Ring

My mother has always been a little strange. At the time these events took place, I was well into my teens. She had been separated and divorced from my father for many years, and was quite happy to be rid of him. It was after all of her own initiative. But somehow, she never got over the flaw of being a divorcee. She felt abandoned and perceived herself as a failure. I have to admit that we did so too, but for entirely different reasons. Anyhow, being divorced at that time was far from being unusual, actually it was getting to be rather the norm in our social environment.

When the separation occurred, my mother was still a relatively young and fairly beautiful woman who could have met someone and built a new life for herself. She tried. She actively and sometimes quite obsessively started looking for a new companion, to no avail. After a short while it became clear to all, if not to her, that her mind was too filled with contradictions and constrictions for it to happen. Her fears outweighed her desire. She was convinced that my brother would deliberately pick fights with him while I would necessarily seduce him.

Although she never claimed to have given up on the concept, over time she started feeling as if by putting herself out there, she was advertising that she was untaken! To remedy her discomfort, she bought herself a used wedding ring from a pawn shop, so she wouldn’t look discarded. To this day she still wears it, and no matter where she goes, there are no available men around…