Tag Archives: Wedding ring

A July Fourth Wedding: Happy Un-Independence Day!

Today marks my sixth “Un-Independence Day.”

I got married on July 4, 2010, to Meg, who is gorgeous, tall and fiercely, fiercely bright.

I was then and continue now to be one lucky guy. Talk about marrying up…

The wedding itself was a relatively easy event compared to getting engaged.

Meg loves waterfalls and what better setting than in the Poconos of Pennsylvania to find a waterfall where I could propose?

Ring? Got it.

Knowing what I was going to say? Pretty well rehearsed.

Finding a waterfall. The Poconos is dotted with them, so I figured this all should be easy-peasy.

But our route to getting engaged had a few detours along the way.

My plan was for Meg and I to go exploring the countryside for a “unique” waterfall, that is, one that we had not visited together or one that we had not seen in some time.

Meg recalled a waterfall at the estate of Marie Zimmermann, who was famous for her metal works and jewelry design and who had a home and farm in what is now the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in the Poconos.

Great!

We can head there and then I can pop the question. And how perfect that Zimmermann was known for jewelry and I have a ring to offer.

Surely this was a good sign, right?

Except that Meg could not recall where exactly the Zimmermann estate was. She had been there many years earlier with a friend.

Maybe it was this way.

No. Wait.

Maybe it was in the other direction.

Or maybe …

Of course, we were in West Nowhere and there was no cell service to be had so looking something up on our smartphones was not an option.

Throughout though, Meg was carefree and enjoying the pretty scenery and pleasant drive.

As for me, I was getting a major case of flop sweat from nervousness about popping the question and anxiety about finding a waterfall.

This went on for the better part of an hour.

By this point, I was ready to pull over, get on bended knee, use a watering can for a waterfall and declare mission accomplished.

We pressed on if for no other reason than we both were now motivated — for different reasons — to find a waterfall, damnit!

We visited a waterfall familiar to us, the one at Raymondskill Falls.

It has a clearing where you can look out at the waterfall but there were some people hogging the spot where I wanted to be.

Hello! People! Man on a mission over here!

They finally moved. Meg was busy admiring the falls, which was my cue.

I got on bended knee, and when she turned around, I held her hand and asked: “Will you spend the rest of your life with me?”

“Yes, yes, with all my heart, yes,” she replied.

And thus plans for a Happy Un-Independence Day were born!

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How a Symbol of Love and Loyalty Saved My Finger

“All kings should have scars.”

That was what Queen Cersei said to her son Joffrey, who was soon to become king on “Game of Thrones.”

As hated as both of those characters were by fans, I have to agree. Scars are reminders of a battle, won or lost, that have left their mark.

Scars have a strengthening quality. For instance, where skin scars, it becomes tougher. All successful marriages have them — they are healthy and necessary for the longevity of the union.

My marriage to my high school sweetheart started with an eight-year courtship, and in May, we celebrated our 26th  wedding anniversary.

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This story, though, is about some of the physical scars that I carry on my wedding band.

I had been taking it off regularly to play guitar.

It felt a little weird while I fretted certain songs and then I sometimes forgot to put it back on when I went to work.

In fact, it was at work when my ring got some of its scars.

There were metal filing cabinets, each about six feet tall, filled with CDs, tapes, disk drives and other media.

Suffice to say, they were very, very heavy.

Building operations people were scheduled to move them but I decided to do it on my own.

I put two cabinets in place, and was moving a third when it slipped off the dolly and caught my hand between it and another one, right on the corners of both cabinets.

Thankfully I had remembered to put my ring on.

If I didn’t have the ring to absorb most of the impact, I shudder to think of what would have happened to my finger.

It was crushed onto my finger.

I used a set of channel lock pliers to reshape it and get it off.

But I won’t fix it with a jeweler.

That physical scar is a forever reminder of how a symbol of love and loyalty saved my finger because I remembered to put it back on.

Now I don’t remove it anymore.

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