Heirlooms

My son and grandson paid me a visit today. They brought some heirloom tomatoes, picked up at a local produce stand -- Smith Family Farm on Sellers Avenue.

They let me know they were coming so I rushed around to make some bread. I didn’t have much flour and decided to make a very small loaf. Kneading it was very hard because it was so sticky and I didn’t have enough extra flour to smooth it out. I created a real mess on the butcher block counter. I scrubbed everything down and washed the bowl and utensils while I waited for the dough to rise in a small pan.

Just before their car pulled into the driveway, I noticed that my engagement ring and wedding band were missing from my finger. I searched everywhere. The kitchen sink drain openings were too small for the ring set to slip down. I looked through the kitchen garbage. I checked the upstairs sink. I tried to review all my morning’s movements. No luck.

I told Davis I had misplaced my ring. He and Victor helped me search around the house. He took the towel off the bread pan and asked if I had taken the ring off when I was kneading the dough. “No, I never take it off,” I said. The dough had doubled in bulk and was ready to go in the oven.

The tomatoes were beautiful. He prepared plates of slices and topped them with balsamic vinegar and a few grains of sea salt. What a delicious treat.

Guess where the ring was? Yes, in the bread. You may be able to see it in the top picture, but here is a close-up:

The wedding set isn’t an heirloom (yet), but the stone came down from my grandmother. There is a story about its design. As a child I loved the book So Dear to my Heart by Sterling North. A famous racehorse named Dan Patch figures in the tale. Dan Patch’s blacksmith bent a horseshoe nail into a circle and gave it to the little boy in the story as a good luck ring.

A horseshoe nail bent into a circle was a dream of mine. When Robert and I were engaged, we found a custom jeweler at a street fair in San Francisco and she designed the engagement ring and a matching wedding ring for us. (After we were married I had the two rings soldered together so they would not slip around each other.)

I’ll put the ring set away in my safe deposit box at my bank.