Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
I wear a wedding band.
I’m married, but that’s another story.
I wear a wedding band that belonged to my paternal grandmother. It’s thin and heavy for its size. I think it’s platinum. There are some engravings that mark some squares and then rectangles but they’re worn and barely recognisable. It’s loose on my finger, so I keep it in place with my engagement ring.
I wear her wedding ring now, not as a symbol of how her marriage was or ended up being, but in recognition of all that I shared with her. When I was little I would crawl into her bed as soon as I woke. We would chat in a sing-songy broken English and there were crazy hand gestures.
We understood each other perfectly.
She didn’t tell me her stories. Why bring up the past? It was over, she said.
She endured a lot, I’ve been told. She was displaced during the Second World War and separated from her husband. She didn’t even know if he was alive. She had a toddler and a mother-in-law in tow during the great famine in rural China. She was accused of being a beggar and a drain on family resources.
You’re not a high priority in the family when your husband isn’t around.
She carried my father on her back across a river when he was sick. She picked willow leaves to boil for food when there was nothing else. And she drove a cattle-drawn cart which held the heavy wooden coffin of her mother-in-law.
She was tiny, my grandmother. But only in height.
I know that ring was on her finger as she struggled daily on her tiny crumpled bound feet. Her toes were broken and curled under foot. She marvelled at her only granddaughter’s growing feet and would laugh and shake her head as they headed for size 10.
I know that ring was on her finger as she followed her only child to a new country. When she wrote to her only sister and told her that this would be the last letter. That she was leaving more than just her country behind her.
I know that ring was on her finger as she continued to struggle every day, but went to English classes and to the Vic market to buy me trinkets and polka-dotted windcheaters that I never wore.
I wear her ring, but I don’t really need a reminder.