What I Learned From Hand Me Downs

What I Learned From Hand Me Downs 

I have an amethyst ring that belonged to the mother of our neighbor back in Clarion when I was a little girl. I got the ring because I was the only one my neighbor knew that was born in February, the same month as the mother of my neighbor.

I called my neighbor Aunt Snoonie, everybody else called her plain old Snoonie, or Louise. Her mother was Grandma Mock.  (No comments out there about last names. Kroh to Clapp---after all!)

Anyhow, Grandma Mock used to come visit Aunt Snoonie and I would go over and play with her. I used to be Wagon Wheel. I put on my six guns, and my cowboy hat, climbed on my stick horse, and I made everybody call me Wagon Wheel. That was my rootin'-tootin' cowboy name. 

So Wagon Wheel would go play with Grandma Mock when she came for a visit. I was too young to understand when she died, but one day I noticed a ring box on my mother’s living room book case.

“What’s in this pretty box, Mom?” I said.

“I will show you, but it’s very special,” my mom said. She got the ring box down and snapped it open to reveal a gold and amethyst ring. “Do you remember Grandma Mock?”

I did. My mother explained that this ring had been hers and it was now mine but I couldn’t touch it until I was a big girl.

I remember looking at it once in a while when I was growing up. Then I got old enough to wear it to homecoming, to prom. Then I took it with me when I got married. 

It is part of my childhood and I plan to wear it at Margaret’s wedding Saturday. (Yipes!) I want to remember all those people that were at my wedding but will not be at my daughter’s. 

So ask me on Saturday to see Grandma Mock’s ring. It stands in for all the people in Clarion who would wish Margaret and Jesse well, and eat my pies, and clink their forks on their glasses, and dance the night away with all of us young and old.