Earlier in the day I’d had trouble seeing the inside of a beautiful, unusually shaped ring that I’d recently found in a local schoolyard while detecting. Rather than being flat, it was almost tubular with the inside wall of the tube cut away so that it could rest on a finger. I mentioned to hubby that I thought there was something written or stamped inside but that I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. 

A few minutes later, as I stood in the shower, he popped into the bathroom to say that he’d managed to view the questionable mark with his tiny magnifying glass and that it was “925.” That’s the mark indicating that the metal is actually silver. 

“Silver!” My mind raced back to the time when Mom embarrassed my first husband. It hadn’t been intentional on her part but, in retrospect, I must admit that she tended toward the unusual in many ways. Time would prove that he didn’t handle “unusual” very well.  

Sadly, I don’t remember the exact set of circumstances, but I think that Mom was picking us up from the airport for some reason. We were riding the train system from point A to point B. As you’d expect, there were a few other people around. That failed to stop Mom’s somewhat strange, spontaneous sense of humor, however. 

Suddenly, she began looking right…then left…then right again. Her expression was one of both wide-eyed excitement and determination. Quickly standing, she crouched and moved conspicuously down the aisle — attracting a bit more attention. (She tended to be very dramatic when given the opportunity.) Once she reached her objective, she stopped and again looked around excitedly. Without saying a word, she slowly reached toward something that was on the floor. By this time, I was wondering, “Oh no! What-in-the-heck are you up to!” and, like me, he was watching every move. 

Moving quickly, she pulled a bright metal object to her breast then, after examining her “prize,” as though in triumph, she raised a shiny stainless steel spoon above her head and declared in a loud, clear voice, “SILLLVERRR!” 

Ah, yes, it was obvious that my husband had seen nothing that he considered to be funny. As a matter of fact, his five-o’clock-shadowed chin quivered though he didn’t even acknowledge that anything had happened. That should have spoken volumes to me but, at the time, I didn’t see it. This was likely the exact point in time at which husband #1 decided that he could never like…much less love the eccentric, outspoken woman who was my Mom. She had just forced him to experience one of those “I-want-to-crawl-in-a-hole” type moments. 

Mom’s been dead for almost thirty years so I relished the time spent standing in the shower being pelted with thoughts of her and the unusual woman she had been. It was that single memory which put the smile on my face as the hot water washed over me. Even today, I can’t help but smile when I think of that…and her many other idiosyncratic antics and behaviors. Thank you, Lord!