The Rita Ring

Our first Chinese Wedding Banquet, in the finest place to have one, is this evening. We are so looking forward to the experience. When I am at the bank this morning, I will be going into the vault to get the ring to wear tonight. The Rita Ring. I never wear it in public as I fear a mugging.

My mom's sister Rita never had children. For the last ten years of her life, she moved closer to me, I saw her at least once a week (I was working full time and was playing in two orchestras), took over her finances when she was bed bound the final three years of her life and was the executor of her estate. We even drove her ashes back to Indiana for a proper burial next to her first husband.

Tom. He was twenty-five years older and a very kind, brilliant man. They were intellectuals, in their day. They owned a newspaper where he was the publisher and she was the editor. It was challenging and exhausting. Weekends were spent away - Michigan or even pre-Fidel Cuba. In fact, on their final trip to Cuba, their plane was fired upon. When they married, he gave her a beautiful miners cut, almost 3-carat diamond. It had been cut around 1900. I remember Tom, I also remember him in the hospital struggling with cancer and the news that Rita was moving to San Francisco to begin again around 1964. She left her piano to us in Chicago, which began our love of music. My sister Lee still has that piano.

Rita had a ball. It was the early 60s, she was a rich widow and the town welcomed her. The apartment I remember the most was right on California Street, a block down from the Fairmont Hotel with views of both bridges and Coit Towers. Life was good.

Eventually, she met and married Maurice in the late 60s. They traveled, owned a famous restaurant at one point, moved to the Pacific Northwest, moved back to Southern California before settling in Pismo Beach in Central California. At one point, Maurice took the large diamond out of Tom's ring, gathered a variety of other diamonds from other jewelry, added a few more for a total of 30 diamonds and presented her with the Rita Ring. It symbolized the two loves of her life.

Before she died, she gave it to me. She wanted me to have it for all the things I had done for her the past 10 years. I vowed to her that I would keep the ring intact, name it properly and pass it down to the daughters in the family. If William has a girl, she will get it, then her daughter will get it. It he has boys, it will stay in a vault until the next generation of girls. Rita loved that idea.

Along with the Rita Ring, I am wearing a necklace for the very first time. It also was Rita's. It is a huge, gold necklace that only recently has come back into fashion. It came with two matching bracelets. I asked mom about it last week and learned that a neighbor of theirs in Chicago went to pre-war Germany in 1936 and returned with presents and tales of the marvelous Adolph Hitler!!! Oh my!!!. Mom was only 8-years old but remembers the beautiful dress they gave to her. Sixteen-year old Rita was given this set.

It should be a fun and interesting day.