The medical technician paused as she turned to leave after checking my left eye’s dilation for cataract surgery. Her eye caught on my hand resting on the arm of the patient’s chair. “My,” she said, “that’s such a pretty ring.” Eleven days before Christmas, and the coincidence tickled me. Initially, I received the ring about eleven days before Christmas which made the timing as the only surprise for anybody in our small country community. Everybody who knew us was expecting me to get a ring for a Christmas present.
Two years before, the year I graduated from high school at sixteen, we had moved to Furrs in Pontotoc County for Daddy to become pastor of the church. Daddy had reported on the fine young man who played the piano when he had made initial visits alone, and it did not take long for my opinion to concur with his. I would soon figure out that it might have even concurred a bit too much. I won’t say it was love at first sight, but Allen and I pretty quickly found we liked spending our time together. Daddy still liked his church pianist, but he became nervous about our youthful ages. He said nothing to me, but in my presence, he firmly told one of his contemporaries, “None of my girls had better mention getting married until she is at least eighteen.”
What he didn’t know was that he had given me permission to follow my plan to finish two years at the nearest junior college before I did, indeed, marry that church pianist. So about eleven days before Christmas, two years after Daddy’s pronouncement, Allen and I came home from our usual date. I went into the kitchen where he was standing, stuck my hand out for him to see the ring, and said, “Daddy, I’m eighteen.”
He said, “Yes, you are.”
I graduated from junior college the last Sunday in May of the next year, and Daddy performed our wedding ceremony the first Sunday in June. I was eighteen and a half, and Allen had just turned twenty. The church pianist joined Daddy’s four daughters to become his first son. I’m not going to lie and say everybody “lived happily ever after,” but it’s been good, and I still agree with the medical technician that it’s such a pretty ring.