Will your husband be joining you? This is question or related questions were asked more often than I anticipated while we were on vacation.

In preparation for vacation, I knew it would be a normal question and it was one I was not ready to continue to answer. To avoid it, the day before leaving for vacation, I decided to take of my wedding and engagement ring and replaced it with my practice ring.

The practice ring is a ring David gave me about a year before we got engaged and I wore it on the wedding finger. We called it the practice ring because I once told David that having an engagement ring would be a big adjustment since I am not used to wearing a ring on that finger. To address this he got me the practice ring. It is a ring that is very dear to me since it was indicative of our first step to getting married.

I thought the absence of wedding ring and engagement ring would help preempt the assumption that I was traveling with my husband.  If it did, it was to a small extent. In hindsight, I remembered the first time I wore my practice ring to work and a co-worker asked with excitement if I was engaged.

My older daughter’s response to the question was what I found most amusing and impressive. When someone asked her “where is your Dad”? Casually, she said, “we left him at home”. I asked her why she said that and she said she did not like sharing her private information with people she doesn’t know.

In the midst of our sadness we try to find happiness and comparing the pictures from this vacation to pictures last year, I believe I have a more sincere smile.