Wedding Rings and Xerox Machines

Something in the corner of my bedroom didn’t look right this morning.

It was 7:25 a.m., the point in our weekday routine when I see, despairingly, that my loved ones are still languishing over puzzles in their pjs while the clock hands spin furiously towards our 8:10 departure time. Downstairs in the kitchen,  I’d just pulled scrambled eggs off the front burner of the stove. On the back burner, a pot of boiling water growled for the tortellini I was making for my kids’ lunchboxes.  I plated the eggs, then darted back to my room for a Sudafed. When I looked down to punch the pill through the foil pouch, I noticed something new on the rug. It wasn’t just the desktop copy machine I brought over last night from the office to print some drawings. It was a shiny silver “8” on the rug next to the copier. With my toe, I nudged the twin circles towards the wood floor. My wedding ring and engagement ring separated and rattled against the oak boards.

I quickly pieced it all together. Everything happens fast at our house–events and their reconstruction. My preschool son had wandered into my room while I was downstairs warming his milk. He’d spun my bedside light around. There he found the rings I’d removed at 2 a.m. because of dry winter skin. Maybe he started to bring them to me, or maybe he had other plans. But en route from my nightstand, he spied the copier I thought I’d hidden from view behind an armchair. With its buttons and paper trays, the machine brought him to his knees on the rug. There he set down the rings, one above the other like the 8’s he’s learning to write.

“It’s good to be curious,”  I found myself saying to him this afternoon as we sat on the sofa reading Curious George Flies A Kite.  “Curious means wanting to learn.” He held my wrist as I turned the page. It’s also good to be lucky.