The Ring

Detalles

Creado en Miércoles, 25 Septiembre 2013 10:42

Última actualización en Miércoles, 12 Agosto 2020 10:02

Escrito por RACSO

Visitas: 2435

 written by R A C S O 

This true story began some years ago, when I  was still a teenager.

It was Saturday afternoon. My brother and sister in law came to my parent´s house to have lunch with us. We used to live in a private neighborhood -an estate- made up of six buildings, a swimming pool, a tennis court, a basketball court, a playground for children which was surrounded by gardens and car park. After lunch I phoned my friends to meet in the park that was in front of my building. While I was waiting for them, I decided to spend time playing “tin” in the tennis court that was near the park.

Tin is a game we invented in our neighborhood and consists of throwing a tennis ball against the flat side wall of the building that is just in front of the tennis court and above the fence three meters high that surrounds it. This side of the building is a flat wall made of bricks with no balconies where the ball could be trapped. So, the game consist of throwing the ball very high and very hard, to try to put your opponents in difficulties to catch it before it bounces, then, if the opponent is able to catch the ball, he or she has to throw it again, against the wall for the following step and so on. There is a shift between the players. But if you fail catching the ball, you have to run very fast towards the fence, touch it and shout “tin”, if you do not do so your opponent can catch the ball and throw it against you to eliminate your life.

While I was warming up,the ball was hold in the garden that is on the border between the back side of the tennis court and the back part of my building where the kitchens and the clothes horses are located. Then I went to recuperate the tennis ball and when I was approaching I realized that something was shining on the ground. I went towards the bright object and discovered that it was a ring. At first sight it seemed to be a lavish jewel, but I didn´t spend too much time testing the ring because I was more interested in continuing playing tin, so I took it and put it into my pocket without paying too much attention to it the rest of the afternoon.

After some hours with my friends I came back home to have dinner. My brother and sister in law had already gone, so I decided to show “My Treasure” to my parents later. Before going to sleep I remembered that the ring was still in my pocket. Although I was tired and wanted to lie on my bed, I looked for it to show it to my parents. They were enjoying their favorite TV program in the sitting room. When I saw the ring the second time I realized that it seemed to be graceful for me, a yellow ring with a big green stone in the middle and two small white stones flanking the big green one. However, when my parents saw “My Treasure” they thought that it was a trinket. I was discouraged, so once again I looked at it and finally I decided to put my fake treasure in a Greek vase that was decorating a shelf of a piece of furniture in the sitting room.

Several years after, my parents decided to move to a new flat in a new building. When they bought it, they encouraged me to buy my own one in the same building as an investment. I followed their advice, as I was still leaving with them. I took advantage of the furniture they didn’t want in their old home to begin to furnish my brand new flat. Little by little I began to spend more time in my flat until the day I decided to move definitely.

I had been living single until a pair of years ago, when my girlfriend and I decided to live together. A common friend has presented us in a pub we used to go on Saturday nights.

Now we are married.

Since we made the decision to get married we had to handle different deals with the organization of the wedding. One of them was to choose the wedding rings. We visited some jewelers. There was one that caught our attention over the rest because he offered us to cheapen the price in exchange of giving him the same weight of the rings in pieces of broken or uneven gold jewels. He would use this gold to make the rings, so only the hand labor would be charged in the price.

The same day, we asked our parents for the broken and uneven pieces of gold that they would not mind to get rid of. At this very moment, meanwhile we were talking to them; I suddenly remembered “the ring I found some years before” in my old neighborhood, although I was not sure if it would be in the same vase I left it.

I still conserved the vase at home. It was decorating my living room. When I looked for the ring inside the vase, amazingly it was there. It survived all these years in the same pot. I turned the pot down, and the ring fell into my hand. It did not shine the same I remembered, perhaps so many years in the dark, and I put it very carefully in a small box with the rest of the golden pieces we found.

The following day, when we went to the jewelry with our little treasure the jeweler checked all the pieces very carefully. Some were of gold some others were not. When the jeweler took and inspected the ring he paid careful attention to the stones. Our surprise was when he warned us to keep the ring because he considered it as a lavish jewel. The jeweler estimated that the ring was made of gold and the stones were: a big emerald and two small but high quality diamonds.

 Therefore we decided not to melt it with the rest of gold pieces and my fianceé took special affection to the ring and decided to keep it for her.

One month and a half before the wedding, we went on holidays with my brother and my sister in law to their flat in La Coruña, in the Northwest of Spain. When we arrived and left the luggage at home, we went for a walk together. During the walk we decided to have some drinks, in a cozy bar, before dinner.

While we were chatting, something caught the attention of my sister in law. My girlfriend was wearing the ring with a special grace. Then my sister in law made a compliment about the ring. She told us that it was beautiful and asked her about it. I told her the way I found it long time before in the street and  that we wanted to melt it with the rest of gold pieces to make our wedding rings but finally the jeweler told us not to do it. At this moment, she gave us the explanations of one very similar ring she used to have, which was a present from my brother when their first child (my cousin) was born. But which was stolen by the housecleaner in their house.

They realized that the housecleaner had stolen some expensive bottles of wine from my brother´s cellar and some pieces of jewelry from my sister in law jewelry-box. Although they didn´t denounce her to the police she recognized to have stolen the wine but not the ring.

Then, my sister in law asked my brother about the terrible resemblance between my girlfriend´s ring and her own one. My brother confirmed that was a very special ring and very similar to hers and added that the ring he bought to her wife was a unique piece. Finally, we change the topic and began to talk about the things we will do during the trip.

Once we went back home, we had dinner and stayed for a while in the living room chatting. Eventually the ring appeared again in our conversation. In this occasion they asked us if they could check the ring to confirm certain details like the size. Both were really sure that my girlfriend´s ring was the one they thought was stolen by their housecleaner many years before.

I told them the story of when I found it again, and we definitely got the conclusion that it was m ore likely that she had lost it while she was helping my mother to clean up the kitchen, at the moment of kicking up the tablecloth throughout the window. The little ease of the ring in my sister in law´  finger with the movements of kicking up the tablecloth, made the ring fell into the street.

The hardest moment for my girlfriend was when my sister in law asked her for the ring. She was so puzzled that with a lot of pain gave the ring to her. And when my sister in law tried on the ring and it fixed perfectly in her finger, a tear rolled down my girlfriend´s face as the ring came back to its owner.

By chance I found the ring and by chance the ring met its beginning.