My first wedding band was made of olive green jade, or possibly some lookalike stone – it's hard to know, since Parker found it at a second-hand store. It didn't cost much, so it might not have been jade. A few days before the wedding, I put the ring on to see if it fit. It went over the knuckle just fine going on, but I couldn't get it off again.
There are several photographs taken on the day of our wedding – July 2, 1993 – in which you can see me pulling at the ring on my finger. I was still trying, in vain, to work it over the knuckle, which by then had become raw and swollen. How was Parker going to slip it on during the ceremony if I couldn't get it off? No dice: it was stuck. I think I managed to work it over my knuckle a total of three times in eleven years – each time, the process necessitated ice cold fingers, and the aid of lots of soap.
It finally split in half in 2004, on Thanksgiving Day. We'd finished dinner, and were sitting around the carcass of our repast, telling stories. I'm pretty sure Scott, my lover, was among the company, since he always used to join us on Thanksgiving. He'd probably brought creamed pearl onions (his grandma's recipe) and that green bean dish with the crispy onions on top. Anyway, despite the massive dose of turkey tryptophan I'd just ingested, I was in an animated mood, and, to emphasize a particular point, I slammed my hands down abruptly onto the wooden armrests of my chair. The two halves of my wedding ring went flying.
I'm not a particularly superstitious person, but I wasn't sure what to make of the fact that I'd broken my wedding ring.
We put more thought into the second wedding band, and spent a good deal more money on it, too. Three tiny diamonds, even, and four inlaid Australian black opals. Parker picked it out at the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show in the winter of 2005. I practiced putting it on and slipping it off again before we plunked down the money. It fit beautifully.
Except that not a year had gone by before the opals started cracking (the technical term is “crazing”), and pretty soon, bits of stone were falling out. Some online research revealed that opal is a “living” stone (whatever that means), and is therefore not recommended for everyday wear. The next time the Gem & Mineral Show came around, we explained the situation to the opal dealers who had sold us the ring. They took it back to Australia with them, and mailed it back a few months later, good as new, free of charge.
It lasted maybe another two years before I started losing pieces of opal again.
Finally, Parker hit on a solution: glitter and epoxy.
I'm looking at the ring right now, as I type: one inlaid crazed opal, one glitter & glue inlay, three diamond chips, one empty socket with two tiny opal bits clinging to the corners, and another glitter & glue inlay. White gold band.
It's also on the fourth finger of my right hand, European-style, because a ring Travis gave me for Christmas gets stuck on the right hand, but will make it over the knuckle on the ring finger of my left hand (with some vigorous twisting).
That's the story of my wedding ring. There's also the story of Parker's and my marriage bed.
Not too long before my first wedding band broke, Parker decided to make us a bed. He had been reading Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, and was feeling all inspired by vernacular design. The marriage bed, according to Alexander, is something couples in some cultures construct for themselves after several years together, after they truly understand the nature of their bond, and can design an appropriate symbol for it.
Parker and I discussed the details of the bed for some time before he began building it. All the visible wood was quarter-sawn oak. There were bedposts of bamboo and, in the headboard and footboard, large circles of verdigrised copper. The completed piece of furniture was gorgeous.
There was just one problem: it weighed more than St. Peter's Basilica. Okay, fine, it wasn't quite that heavy, but man that sucker was a bitch to move. Parker hadn't given any thought to how to construct the bed so that it would be not just sturdy, but also lightweight enough to, say, slide it three inches closer to the wall without the help of a football team on 'roids.
Over the years, we've attempted to lighten our marriage bed by cutting the base in half (so that each half can be moved separately, and then rejoined once both are in place), dispensing with the headboard and footboard (Parker used both in a sort of strange wall panel he designed for our office, which means they are now part of this house), taking off the bamboo posts and canopy latticework, and cutting off a good 4 inches at the head end of the base.
This morning, Parker told me he wasn't sure he wanted to move the bed again, even though at this point it's just the wooden base (with four handy built-in drawers, for underwear and socks) and a mattress. I said I wasn't keen on trying to get it down the stairs and into a moving truck either. When we were moving into this house, I pulled my arm muscles trying to maneuver the thing, even though we were just dealing with half at a time.
“I would consider parting with it, if we could find a good home,” he said.
“Travis just has his memory foam on the floor,” I mused, and then quickly changed my mind: “Never mind – it will be just as big a pain for him to move it,” I said. “What if he decides he wants to join us in the northwest? I don't want him feeling like he's got to lug that behemoth with him when he comes.”
We couldn't bear to get rid of it, though. Sienna was conceived and also born on that bed. Parker and I have shared it with each other, and with our lovers, too. It's got some serious sentimental value.
After a bit of discussion, we decided that the best option would be to dismantle the bed, keep the drawers and all the pretty parts, and discard the rest. We'll rebuild the whole thing once we've settled in our new location, using a completely different structural design and lighter materials.
I think these two allegories kind of stand on their own, but I'll offer a brief explication.
You can get a wedding ring at Diamonds-R-Us or at Tiffany's, but in either case, you're buying someone else's design. On the other hand, if you go with something less traditional, less tried & true, you might end up with a marriage that looks cobbled together: part sublime, part ridiculous.
Also: there are perfectly good beds at Ikea. They're lightweight, chic, and affordable. I doubt they're going to last longer than a few years, though. One day, something's going to get smashed up, and you'll discover that there's particle board underneath that veneer. On the other hand, if you go with a concept of marriage you construct yourselves, something you fashion out of idealism and the sturdiest materials you can find, you may need to jettison bits of it periodically. You may even have to take the whole thing apart and put it back together in some new configuration that will better fit your circumstances.
Stripped down to its essence, what I'm saying is that long-term relationships are about building and dismantling things together, making it work with what you have on hand. Stability lies in the continual act of co-creation, not in the structures you create.
No comments:
Post a Comment