Friday, May 19, 2006

The $7.00 Wedding Ring


At 19 Maggie was the youngest district manager in the history of the company she worked for. Rumor had it she was the youngest in the city of New York.The problem was that at 19 she looked like she was 16 and she was sensitive about it. Despite growing up in the same neighborhood they'd never met. Twenty year old William first spotted Maggie in the middle of small crowd talking to some salesmen.He would later say that it was love at first sight for him. That spring had been a bad one for the chain,their stores had been getting robbed every couple of weeks just before their 1 am closing. One manager had been killed and a couple injured. William had been sent there to keep an eye on things. Maggie was there on what was supposed to have been her day off over working herself as usual. She'd just finished a 16 hr shift covering for an employee who'd been fired the night before. Maggie glanced appreciatively at William but the fact that he kept staring at her got on her nerves. She finally walked over to him and introduced herself to him. “Oh you’re Maggie?! I’ve heard of you! You’re the kid manager right? ” “Yup that be me.” But he already knew who she was; he had asked as soon as he spotted her. "You're a cute kid." "Oh into kids are you? What are you a pedeophile? I'm a woman not a kid." Yeah he'd heard about that smart mouth of hers too.

From that day on William made it a point to stop in at the store on his way home. He kept asking her out and she kept turning him down. One of Maggie’s friends had a massive crush on him and after having made drinking plans with Maggie invited William to tag along with them without telling Maggie. When the girl’s boyfriend showed up at the lounge uninvited and looking less than thrilled Maggie and William decided to leave. William offered to walk Maggie home, they stopped for some ice cream laughing over what had just happened. The walk home lasted 7 hours. As the sun came up they went into his favorite diner for breakfast and Maggie started discussing her plans for the future and asked him about his “ Im going to marry you”, Maggie thought he was joking.


They’d been dating for a few months when William began the daily ritual of proposing to Maggie her answer was always "no". He swore to her he was going to wear her resistance down. She didn’t want to get married. The commitment scared her and she wasn’t sure if she loved him enough to spend her life with him. Then one day Maggie told William about her friend the cashier they'd gone to the lounge with. She had gotten pregnant by an ex-boyfriend but didn’t find out until she was several months into her new relationship and was now afraid. William couldn’t understand what the big deal was, “If the guy really loves her it shouldn’t matter who the baby’s father is. The baby is a part of her, it’s growing inside of her, if he loves her he will love the baby too.” It was at that moment that my mom knew she loved him. When he asked her that night to marry him she said,"yes". Papi almost fainted, he asked her 3 more times as he hugged her just to make sure.

Maggie dragged her feet in planning the wedding. She hadn’t set a date or picked a dress. Both sides of the family were nagging away at her to move her ass. The only thing she'd done was the license. William didn’t want to press her he knew she was petrified of marriage given all she had seen as kid so he let her take her time. His parents loved her. As fate would have it they'd actually met her before at her job. They'd known her for about a year. William's father had wanted to introduce them to each other but Maggie had declined the offer.


It was their day off and the wedding license was due to expire in a couple of days. He knew that she wasn’t keeping track of that and that’s when he made his move. “How about we go down to Canal and pick out our wedding bands?” he asked. Her outfit for the day consisted of her favorite jeans the ones with the holes at the knees and the frayed hem, William’s navy blue Izod sweater thrown over her white shirt button down shirt, William's tie and her white skippys. Her long curly hair was up in a pony tail with the odd ringlet out here and there. William was wearing his usual dress slacks and dress shirt even outside of his uniform you could still peg him as a cop. Just before they were leaving a friend knocked on the door,”Hey Willie told me you guys were going shopping at Canal can I tag along? I’ve got to pick up a copy of my birth certificate”

They spent the morning hopping from store to store before Maggie finally found a set she liked but the jeweler wouldn’t have it in William’s size until the following week. They left a deposit on the rings. They then headed to Centre street so Carmen could pick up her birth certificate which just happened to be in the same building where the marriage bureau was located. On the way there William stopped to check out some sterling silver jewelry from a street vendor. Maggie loved silver so he picked out some dangly silver earrings for her and a silver band with a tribal pattern ring for each of them. Her ring cost $7.00 dollars and his cost $10.00 he put the earrings on her put kept the little bag with the rings in his pocket.


While Carmen stood in a wickedly long line to apply for her birth certificate William excused himself to use the phone he’d just been paged from work. Twenty minutes later returned with a couple of white carnations, “some Hari Krishna guy is outside handing them out” and placed the flowers in my mother’s hair. A few more minutes passed and Carmen decided it was best if she came back another day it was just too crowded. “Boogie let's go to the 2nd floor and check the expiration date for our license.” When the got to the 2nd floor he told Maggie to have a seat while he went to check it out. She was surrounded by couples dressed in their best; some had regular clothes but the tip off were the few women there in bridal gowns that’s when she realized what was going on. The panic set in her eyes looked teary and her face was flushed and she bolted.

My father caught up with her in the lobby. They spoke for a few minutes she cried, they laughed and finally he told her how it had been destiny that had led him to her. His parents had tried to hook them up...It had been her day off she wasn't supposed to be working that night... He wasn’t supposed to be the one at her store the night he met her, it was supposed to have been his partner but he came down with food poisoning. He told her how he had fallen in love with her the first time he’d seen her and asked her to take care of him that he wasn’t too sure he could make it in this world without her and then he got down on his knees and proposed all over again in front of a crowd of strangers.

There was no wedding dress, no photographers, no family; just mom in her ripped jeans, and papi in his dress slacks and when he slipped a $ 7.00 wedding ring on her finger she cried. Twenty four years later she refuses to replace that ring. My father has brought her many fancy replacements over the years some fancier than others but she refuses to wear them preferring her $7.00 wedding band instead.

Labels: mom and dad

Posted by @ 1:48 AM
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