Appalachia Year

Beavercreek.

On a mission to replace the battery in my grandfather's stopped watch at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving eve, my dad and grandpa ended up at a diamond store by the mall. It's one of those places where they offer you a bottle of water and do everything short of a hand job to make you feel pampered as a valued customer. From the way they talked it up afterwards, my dad and grandpa really took the bait. While his watch was being fixed, the sales lady offered to have their rings cleaned as a complimentary service. The two of them came home with glittering wedding bands that flashed like new. When my parents compared bands, it really looked as though my dad was newly married.

My mom and grandmother starting maybe-joking-maybe-serious insisting that they too needed their rings cleaned. My dad, who excels at taking things too far, popped all of their rings, five total, onto his stubby hairy digits, many of them not fitting past the first knuckle, and wiggled his fingers meaningfully at us as he grabbed his car keys.

We heard the garage door go up and the door close, but before long he appeared in the kitchen again looking downtrodden. "Well, I don't wanna go by myself."

So, after a suggestion from my grandfather that certainly sounded more like a fiat, I found myself in the passenger seat next to my dad's bejeweled hands gripping the steering wheel. At this very early point of the Family Weekend, I had Good Sport dripping out of my ears and I was buckled in and forcing an amused grin as we wound around the dark, rural roads.

As we approached the jewelry store, I was stunned motionless by a surge of teenage embarrassment. Show up to the jewelry store he was just at, to demand a free service for his absent wife and mother's jewelry, not dropping a dime, and waltzing out the door? It seemed tacky, bizarre, but mostly, embarrassing.

I stopped in front of the glass doors, regarding the many illuminated cases held within.

"Dad, this is really weird. This is a really weird thing."

My dad paused and examined my face. Stroking his chin with a gold-spangled hand, he said, "I'm a weird guy, Evie. I do weird things."

And when we got home, he presented the sparkling new/old rings in velvet boxes, and my mom and grandma ooh-ed and aah-ed. My parents' wedding bands had equivalent lusters and I disappeared upstairs to read my book in my childhood bed that seems to shrink with every visit home.