Lost and Found

My husband lost his wedding band last week.  And then it was found.  It makes for a good story--you know, the kind with a happy ending.

Last week, Jim took our grandson to one of his and our favorite summer swimming holes, Whipple Dam State Park.  They were having a grand old wet time when Jim felt his wedding ring slip right off his finger.  For over an hour, he, Alex, and a couple kids with goggles searched to no avail for the gold band.  At one point, a worried grandson asked his grandad, "Are you going to tell Nana?"

When my two guys came home, the first thing my husband of 41 years said to me was, "I lost my wedding ring."  I could tell he was really sad about it.  So I listened to the story with appropriate sympathy, and then in an attempt to make him feel better, I suggesting resizing my father's gold wedding ring. If Jim could not longer wear the ring I gave him when we married over four decades ago, I would feel really good about him wearing the band my father once wore for over 50 years.  The next day, Jim retrieved Dad's ring from our safety deposit box and took it to the jewelry store to have it sized, engraved with our wedding date (alongside Mom and Dad's initials), and polished up.  I considered this the best ending possible to Jim's tale of woe.

But my husband wasn't willing to give up so easily.  He remembered a recent story in our local newspaper about a Penn State student who had discovered a 50 year old State College High School class ring.  "If I can find the name of that student, maybe I can contact him and he can find my ring," Jim asserted.  After searching unsuccessfully online and fruitlessly through our stack of to-be-recycled newspapers, we walked down to our local library when they archive a bigger stack of recent local newspapers when Jim easily found the article and the name.  After a quick search of the Penn State directory, he found what he thought was the man he was looking for and he dashed off an email.  That night we met Rob, his blue truck, and his charming girlfriend Ally at the state park.

While Ally and I stood at waters' edge, Jim and Rob waded in, metal detector and shovel in hand, to the approximate site where Jim was fairly certain his ring left his finger.  A systematic search ensued. After almost an hour, I was just about ready to suggest that we abandon the quest. Rob was shivering, and it seemed to me highly unlikely that a small gold band could be found in a rather vast lake, even if Jim had isolated the probable area.  Our ring finder extraordinaire, suggested that perhaps moving inland a bit might be good idea.  Maybe, he said, the ring had been kicked in.  Within a couple minutes of repositioning the metal detector, Ally and I could hear a distinctly different buzz.  Rob said, "we definitely have a reading here of something located about four inches down.  I don't want to get your hopes up, but I think we are on to something."  In went the shovel.  One scoop.  Nothing.  The second scoop.  Nothing.  And then....Rob lifted up the third shovelful and whoop and holler erupted simultaneously from both Jim and Rob.  Right on top of the the small mound of sand rested Jim's gold ban.  Success!  I couldn't believe it! My husband was right all along--the lost can be found if you hope, believe, and search enough!