Sitting on the small, two-drawer chest somewhat in the middle of my study, is the small, brown, ring box, now worn and faded in places, that my mom’s engagement ring eventually came to rest in – a ring of 22k gold, my mom said, with three good-size sapphires and little diamonds in between – the ring that my dad and mom bought in Chiswick, London in early March 1945, a little less than three months before they were married.
The box is small, about 1½ × 1½ inches with a rounded arched top that unlatches by pressing in a small, round, metal knob on the front of the bottom half of the box. A pattern of what seems to me to be like scales of a small fish, covers the entire box, and the original dark brown color of the box is now mostly worn away and faded to a tan and light brown, especially on the sides of the top half where the thumb and finger would be placed to open and lift the hinged top. Barely discernible in the middle of the top rounded lid, appears to be a small crown with three fleur-de-lis along the top of the crown, faint traces of the green or blue paint with which it was embossed still visible.
Over the years, my mom’s fingers were the principle agent in wearing away the brown color of the box. As a young woman of eighteen, she first handled the box as the one wearing the engagement ring. Born in Southampton, moving up to London when she was nine, evacuated by bus to the English countryside with her school at thirteen when WWII started, she possessed at eighteen, from her photos, a soft and appealing beauty with wide-open hazel eyes and a gentle yet hesitant smile of slightly parted lips. She was the youngest of three adult children of an Italian father and English mother, the only one still living at home, and was soon to wed an American G.I. who had money, chocolate candy, and was definitely over there.
This young woman, my mom, during her last year in England, and in the ten months between the time my dad left England in June 1945, and she arrived in California in March 1946, must have opened the box many times to put on her engagement ring or to take the ring off when needed, for my mom was always frugal and very cautious with precious things. But during that time in England, while she waited to sail to the USA as a British war-bride – with her deepest thoughts and feelings, always closely held and intensely quiet and private – the opening of the box and the wonderful wearing of the ring, and the closing of the box and the safe cradling of the ring within it, must have always elicited a tender and constant longing for my father, the only man she would ever have in her life, whose lips and caresses she had enjoyed and possessed for only two weeks before he was shipped away from England and from her then empty arms. These feelings were something she never really spoke about to any of us and never to me, even when in time I held the box and delighted in the sight of the ring, for why should she share intimate thoughts given her private, quiet, English ways.
My mom may have also kept her wedding band in the box, an 18-karat gold ring with a beautiful embossing of ivy leaves entirely around the ring. From my mom’s diary entries, my parents bought the wedding rings from a different jeweler at a later date before the wedding, and the box itself seems to have come sometime after the purchase of the engagement ring because my mom does mention more than once going to the jeweler to inquire if the box had arrived.
Below is the entry from my mom’s diary where she and my dad buy the engagement ring.
March 3, 1945 Saturday
Aunty brought me a cup of tea at 7.00. Got up washed dressed & went to St. Pancras to meet Leo also saw Geoy. Came home & had a talk, Leo said that the father might make a fuss, hope he doesn’t. Went to high Street bought ring & became officially engaged. Both broke now. Went home everyone seems pleased. Cooked our dinner at home. Bill rang up. Waited in for Dad to write 3 letters of consent. Went to the Odeon & saw “The Man in Half Moon St.” & “San Diego I love you”. Came home for supper waited up for Dad & went to bed about 12.15. Brought up 5 towels (10) candy grapefruits. 2 tins tomatto Juice.
More than sixty years after my mother arrived in California, my sisters and I processed my mom’s diaries and in the last five years or so of my mom’s life, I spent many of my evenings with my mom going over the entries, correcting our spelling, and asking for clarification. One of my annotations to the March 3, 1945 entry read:
This was the engagement ring – this was in Chiswick. This was the first time they had looked at engagement rings. All the rings they looked at were older rings. If you wanted a ring with any gold in it, you had to get an older ring as you couldn’t get rings with much gold in them during the war – only 9 carats. The engagement ring was 22 karats. My mom liked the ring. She didn’t want just a diamond. This was sapphires and diamonds. My dad liked it. My dad paid for it. Was able to take the ring away with them when they left the shop. My mom probably also put money towards it too. Maybe spent £35 for the ring.
My mom always spoke of the ring in her matter-of-fact voice, that my father gave it to her, and that she liked it because it was unusual. The ring was unique because of the sapphires, and, to me, the little box was also unusual and unique, and both were constants and good in my life, just as my mom was a constant to me as a boy growing up. Sometimes my mom would not be wearing her engagement ring and I once asked her why. She said that if she was going to do too much work, or hard work, she didn’t want to wear it and damage it. That I could understand.
As a boy, as I grew up, I remember picking up the box whenever I saw it; my mom never denied me this habit, this quiet curiosity, which was in fact, looking back on it, a meditation of sorts. I would open the box, always intrigued it seems by the little push knob, always satisfied when it opened. A few times, I remember the engagement and wedding band resting in the box, and I would lift them carefully out of the box to look at them with great interest and an appreciation for their beauty. The rings were always pretty to my eyes, and because they were my mom’s rings, they also always had an aura of being precious and something entirely beyond the ordinary.
Once, when I was in college and I came home to visit for the weekend, the subject of the engagement ring came up, and my dad and a younger sister told me that one of the sapphires had come out and disappeared. I was shown the ring and, yes, so it was, one of the sapphires was missing, one of the side stones, and it was disturbing thing to see, for there was now something not entirely right with the ring, it was broken, incomplete, and its beauty was marred.
And for me, and I believe also for the family members still at home, there was more to this event than just the missing sapphire. As I was looking at the ring, my mom’s ring, with the missing stone, an uneasy feeling came over me, a feeling that something more than just the ring was not right. The thought haunted me that perhaps there was something now also not right with the home, my family, my mom, my life – like someone had broken into and ransacked our house, stupidly breaking the few treasured possessions that we had, or as if one of my parents were injured and in a hospital, but at a far distance. And the whole family seemed disturbed, especially my dad and youngest sisters still at home, but my mom…well, really not so much, though of course she was English and was more practical than passionate, more dutiful than emotionally given over to either the vagaries or the external joys of life. That was not the rest of the family though.
After a while, my dad and sisters found a jeweler who was able to find a matching sapphire and repair the ring. I saw the ring the next time I came home, and even though the replacement stone was a slightly paler blue, it matched the other two sapphires to my eye in size and shape. And so, the ring was again intact and, even though slightly altered, was once more satisfying and pretty to behold. And now with the ring fixed and back at home in its box or on my mother’s finger, everything again seemed right, and the home and the family was once more again calm and at peace.
When my mom died, the engagement ring with the sapphires was taken by one of my sisters, and I eventually acquired the box. Another sister acquired the wedding band originally embossed with the pretty ivy pattern; though in fact we had a hard time identifying my mom’s original wedding band as the ivy embossing had almost entirely disappeared – worn away with use, since 18-karat gold is very soft.
Through all the almost seventy years my mom had the ring box, she kept the box for its practical use, and I don’t think she was sentimental over it. I took the box because of what it had become to me when I was young, and how it was still a connection to my mom and my young life, something that had helped order and center my home and my life.
Years before my mom died, she gave me my dad’s wedding ring, beaten up and even cracked through just a few years of the mostly physical labor jobs my dad worked, as it was also 18 karat gold. My dad had stopped wearing it after a while and I don’t ever remember seeing a wedding ring on his finger. I had the ring repaired and polished, but I have never worn it, as it was too small for my fingers, and so now it rests in a bank’s safety deposit box – an unnatural place for a ring and satisfying to no one. Perhaps it waits to be melted down one day and refashioned with other gold into a wedding ring for a grandson when the time comes and if he so desires. My mom and dad would approve of that, keeping the little gold we still have, the gold that came to California in 1946 from England, in the family.
Postscript: Below is additional information for the diary entry on March 3, 1945. The first two items are from written annotations I made from my mom’s verbal explanations. The third and fourth items are from memory.
Went home everyone seems pleased – My mom did not really know if her mother was pleased. Maybe her mother didn’t want my mom to come to America right then. Her mom never talked about coming to America to visit. Her health wasn’t very good. (Additional Note: My mom never saw her mother again as her mother died in 1947, just about six months after my older sister was born.)
Waited in for Dad to write 3 letters of consent – My mom’s father wrote these letters of consent. My mom doesn’t remember what he did with them. Maybe he had to send them off some place.
Leo said that the father might make a fuss – This was Father Nobbs, the Catholic priest at St. Dunstan’s Catholic Church in Acton not far from where my mom lived. My dad was Catholic, my mom was Anglican, so there was some concern whether the Catholic priest would marry them or that they would be able to be married in the Catholic Church.
Bill rang up – Bill, an army buddy of my dad, was Bill Baptista, who was going to be his best man at the wedding. My sisters and I never met Bill Baptista, but for many, many, years, he and my parents would exchange Christmas cards. I was always intrigued with his address, because he lived in Poland, Ohio.
***
To View all Postings in Little Treasures, Please uses the Link Below.
Little Treasures – Writing In The Shade Of Trees
Thanks for the Beautiful story, Chris! I was drawn to the subject matter because I have worked extensively with my son in researching records related to WWII collectibles.
Having a diary and also your Mother’s memories regarding these beautiful objects adds so much!
Wonderful memories that you shared so well.