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Revise my notion of romance? Nah...
Wednesday, Mar. 05, 2003, 4:33 p.m.
My parents have been married for 22 years. They've known each other since my mom was in 7th grade and my dad was in 8th. The day they met, my mom came home and told her dad that she had found the man she was going to stay with for the rest of her life. Her dad laughed. Seven years later, they were married. My parents have, literally, known each other for more of their lives than they haven't.
When my dad proposed to my mom, and she accepted, he made their wedding rings from coins (silver dollars, I think) that were minted the year each of them was born. He made the rings. This has always seemed the height of romance to me. (Admittedly, I've got a slightly skewed sense of romance.)
My dad is in construction. He's a foreman who has refused to be promoted several times because, and I quote, "I don't want to be chained to a desk." He's good at what he does and he loves the work. Even though he's gotten hurt, repeatedly at his job. One time, he was building a deck and set a skill saw down. The guard didn't swing up properly, and the saw ran across the wood and up my father's hand. His ring finger. On his left hand. If it hadn't been for the ring, it's entirely possible the finger would have been cut off entirely. Either way, he would have lost the use of that finger entirely because the saw nicked his tendon and cut a sliver of bone out of his finger, as it was. In the emergency room, he refused to let them cut the ring off his hand. Because he had made it with his own hands at the same time he made my mother's, in a labor of love that he didn't want to see severed.
I've told Anthony this story. Probably several times. :) It's not that I wanted him to make our rings because... well, Anthony just isn't a handy-man sorta guy and it wouldn't be him, y'know?
For Valentine's Day, you know what he did? He got a proof set of the coins that were minted the years we were born. "Well," he said, "they weren't making real silver coins anymore by the time we were born, and I don't know how to make a ring from a coin anyway, so... I thought we could continue the tradition this way."
I burst into tears. (Eminently logical, yes?)
Is he sweet, or what?
And if anyone's interested, here are the pictures of the proof sets. :)
Cuz, you know, you're all dying to see it! :)