The Easter Bread and the Wedding Ring

Today being Easter Sunday, it seems the appropriate time to share the story of The Easter Bread and The Wedding Ring.  I’ll save the blog post on cursing for next week.

First, a little background.  Italian-Americans have a lot of traditions and a lot of the traditions revolve around holidays and food.  Easter is no exception.

We make this most amazing bread for Easter.  It’s so good, I never understood why we couldn’t make it year-round.  I guess it wouldn’t be called Easter Bread if that were the case.

Growing up, my mom, aunts, grandmother would all bake the Easter Bread.  Those loaves of bread were like currency too.  An aunt might drop by for a cup of coffee and say, “Oh, here’s an Easter Bread for you.  I had some extras.”  You truly could never have enough Easter Bread.

Fast forward to maybe 10 or so years ago.  All my life, I had never baked an Easter Bread.  I never really had to, because someone was always dropping off a loaf, or I just went without.

I was never much of a baker myself.  Requires too much precision.  Unlike cooking where I can just throw in a little of this, a little of that, no precise measurements required.

So, I called up my sister, she being a baker of the Easter Bread.  She being a baker period. I asked her for the recipe because for the first time in my life, I was going to make it.

She happily responded with, “Why don’t I come over and we’ll make it together?”

“Yes,” I replied, “that would be great!”

My sister arrived and the tutorial began with, “First, remove your rings.”

Alrighty.  I gave a tug on the diamond engagement ring.  It didn’t really budge.  In, call it 28 years of marriage at that point, I had never taken off my wedding rings.  Or rarely took them off.  I think I had taken them off to give birth twice.

A little more gentle tugging and a little soap and water, and the diamond came off.

Next up, the band.  Tug. Tug. More tugging. More tugging.  No budging.  Apply soap.  Apply ice. Apply olive oil.  No budging.  Finger is swelling.  I google how to remove a ring that is stuck on your finger.  I tried everything except for the dental floss solution.  That just sounded scary and like I might risk serious life-threatening damage.

“Ok, let’s forget it,” I said to my sister.  “It’s not coming off.  I’ll deal with it later, maybe after the swelling goes down.  Let’s bake some bread.”

And bake bread we did.  She showed me how to make the dough, how to knead the dough, letting it rise, etc.  And at the end of it, we had delicious loaves of Easter Bread.  Yumm!

But the story doesn’t end there.  I still have a stuck wedding ring on my finger.  And the swelling isn’t going down much, if at all.

My sister left and Ernie arrived home from work later. 

I showed him my finger and told him the story.  I may have said something like, “Not sure what to do if this swelling doesn’t go down and I can’t get the ring off.”  I mean, what do you do in that case? Does one go to the ER? That seemed silly.

Ernie wasted no time however in coming up with a solution.  He told me later that he immediately started calculating time and money costs associated with any of the solutions I may have considered.

So he replied with an, “I got this!”

He disappeared upstairs and came back down with a pair of wire cutters in his hand.

“Nooooo,” I shrieked!

“Come on,” he said.  “It’ll be so easy.  I will just snip the band.  You can’t leave your finger like that.  You’re going to cut off the circulation.  I got this!”

I wavered.  Once he introduced the thought of cutting off the circulation, my anxiety kicked in.  It had already been hours.  How much longer would it take for death-by-cut-off circulation to occur? I weighed my options and his seemed like the lesser of two evils.  Because, again, going to the ER seemed ridiculous.

“Ok,” I said hesitantly and with more than a modicum of fear in my voice.  But once the decision was made, like ripping off a band-aid, I just wanted it over with.

I held out my hand, turned my head and closed my eyes.  I did not want to watch.  I am, after all, not a masochist.

He snipped the thin gold band right in the middle of it on the backside of the finger.

“OWWWWW,” I screamed!

He had no problem snipping the band.  However, my swollen finger was too big for the band to just pop off.  Instead, each side of the now broken band was digging into the fleshy, enlarged finger.  It was agony. 

Also, my OCD thoughts on contamination kicked in.  The wire cutters were rusty, dirty and neither of us had thought to swab them with alcohol before starting this little surgical procedure.

Ernie said, “Look, I gotta make another snip.  Just one more and that should do it.”

I was near tears and said, “I don’t think so!”

But I knew he was right.  No stopping at this point.

I offered him my hand again.  Only this time, with the second snip, it caused pressure and the two cut ends dug in even deeper into my finger causing yet even more pain.

But the second snip did it.  The ring was off.  I immediately triaged my finger where it had been punctured and was bleeding and hoped that my tetanus shot was up to date.

But the story still doesn’t end there.

10 or so years go by.  About 6 months or so ago, I finally decide to have my diamond ring resized to fit my finger.  For 10 years, the ring languished in my jewelry box.  For I was never able to get it back on after the Easter Bread and the Ring incident.

I went to my local jeweler.  She sized it up and told me it will be ready in about a week.  I told her the story about the ring and she exclaimed, “Oh my!”.  “You know, all you need is a little Windex.  That totally gets stuck rings off.”

I looked at her askance.  Were we filming a scene for My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Part 4?

She saw my doubt and whipped out a bottle of Windex from under the counter. “Let me show you,” she said.

Putting another ring on my finger that I was also getting enlarged, she said “Watch!”

She squirted the Windex.  The ring slid off.

She also suggested I bring in the remains of my wedding ring— the pieces of which I have kept in my jewelry box all these years- and that they could fashion it into a necklace. 

Now we are at the end of the story. 

And the moral of the story is keep some Windex handy and never let your husband or partner, no matter how well-intentioned, near you with a pair of wire cutters. At least not without being up to date on your tetanus shot.

And for any of you who celebrate it today, Happy Easter!