 Ring on My Other Hand |
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"I never want to see this again." I brought the ring to my parents' house after the engagement was broken, throwing it on the counter. Wordlessly, they swept it out of sight. My grandparents, all of them, have been on my mind a lot lately. Filling an expansive wall with old photographs of them has been a recent project of mine, and walking past them every day and seeing them stare back at me in black and white from the silver frames has made them feel more present to me. I think that planning to run in a race for the cure of the illness that took one grandmother's life and being present for the end of another's has somehow weirdly been strengthening the fibers of memory that connect the living and the dead. 
I've felt them touching me somehow, through time and through my thoughts, and I've realized that my grandparents who shared the ring wanted me to have it, and they would want it to find its way back to me.  My grandfather really loved my grandmother. She was beautiful, and on a gondola in Venice, this ring was a gift from him to her, and she designed it based on a ring of her mother's, my great-grandmother. 
And if ever there was a ring more beautiful than this ring, I cannot imagine it. And it's my ring. It always was my ring. With a dream and a promise, I shared it with him and he shared it with me, but both before either of us dreamt that dream and after that dream died, along with my belief about the kind of man he was, the ring was and has been mine alone. So my grandmother gave it to me, and because he asked them to, my parents gave to him. To give to me. And he did. And then he took it off of my hand. Because I wouldn't. And then I couldn't have it, or see it, or think about it, not for a long time. But today, this day, one year later, I give it back to myself. It was simple, really. I just asked my parents for it, and they gave it back to me. Yesterday, on a Sunday afternoon with the three of us in their living room instead of the four of us, my mother said, "May this from now on be a symbol of how much your grandparents loved each other and the love of your family." When he gave it to me, the ring changed. It became about us, and our love, and our future. But it doesn't have to stay that way. Now, somehow, it's almost as if it's been changed back. I'll wear it on my other hand now, and maybe every day that I wear it, it will feel more and more like that's where it belongs. That I'm where I belong.
2002: 2001: None
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© Copyright 2003 elb |
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