#SoCS, Engraved

I am finally going to be one of the first to get my #SoCS post out there this week.

A few weeks ago, I could not think of something to write – not one thing, with that week’s prompt not inspiring enough ideas for me.

Then, last week, the prompt gave me too many possible choices and I chose to do none of them.

Well, with this week’s prompt I am back and ready to share a little stream of consciousness with you.

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SATURDAY

***

On my sixteenth birthday, my oma gave me a big bar of my favourite chocolate and something in a little triangular box.

“This belonged to my parents,” she told me, as I lifted the lid, revealing an old ring inside.

She always wore them, several rings on her fingers.

“This one,” she informed me, as I touched the band on her finger, “Opa bought for me. I give you this one when I die,” she would say to me, as matter-of-factly as she often could be, but I chose not to think of a time when my beloved Czech grandmother may not be there, rings and all.

I kept the little triangular box with me, not letting it out of it’s home like I did with my other rings.

I often wonder about where my ring has been, what life it lived, long before I took possession of it.

I would sometimes think it is a part of my life, but really I am, for a little while, a part of its’.

I don’t know much about my great-grandparents. I don’t know where the ring has been or what it may have seen during it’s early years.

How had it survived – traveled all those years and miles, from Europe to Canada and from them, to their daughter, to me?

I can not read the engraving on the ring, but I believe (if memory serves me) it is dated 1919 and will soon be 100 years old.

I haven’t been able to wear it often, as it was a little bit too big for my small fingers. I still don’t like to wear it, for fear that it could slip off and be lost forever to me.

I have lost precious things and precious people in my life, never got a chance to meet my great-grandparents, but I won’t lose this symbol of their love.

Okay, so although I do not know their story like I wish I did, I like to imagine things about them and their love for one another.

I keep the ring, securely in its box, hidden under my underwear in a drawer, away from the inquisitive hands of my nephew. He likes to play in my room, looking at my jewelry, specifically putting my many rings on his fingers. This one ring he can not, he must not find, as he is too young now, not able to understand the history and the memory wrapped up in that little ring.

“Tweasure,” my nephew cries, whenever he spots anything even resembling a treasure box. He thinks my mom has one at her place, but in it, to his disappointment, he finds only boring slips of paper and other things.

He has found an old tin chest I have to remember my oma by.

He likes to open it up, like a “door,” he says.

I always remember that same chest sitting on my oma’s dresser, in what once was the bedroom my dad’s two older brothers shared, where I slept any night I stayed with her.

It had a metal rose with a magnet on the bottom stuck on the lid and was often locked with a tiny lock. I was dying of curiosity, but the only treasure inside it was a bunch of pennies and other coins. It was still my favourite thing in that entire room.

Treasures are relative things, subjective to each and every one of us.

I will treasure the ring I received on turning sixteen and I will hold onto the memories and the history before my time, if those who are gone I can no longer have with me.

Those people and their stories and lives will, forever, be engraved on my heart.

1919-2019 – Time will go on, but nothing will ever change that.

***

Linda speaks of treasures here:

http://lindaghill.com/2015/07/10/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-1115/

Every day is to be treasured, I say, as I plan my next post:

https://summat2thinkon.wordpress.com/ten-things-of-thankful/

Thanks to Stream of Consciousness Saturday and Ten Things of Thankful, I love weekends again.