**This post has been backdated. I have had time to write, but I have not had time to post**
Borrowing things isn’t necessarily something intended for return. Take, for instance, the phrase “can I borrow a piece of paper”, anyone who asks this knows they’ll be writing all over it and will therefore not be returning it. It’s a sort of ingraned politeness, instead of “have” which conotes greediness, we use the more polite term of “borrow”, the giver knows they won’t get the paper back, but they never are too quick to change your wording (unless you go to school with perfectionist, in which case, they do). We ask to borrow a lot of our fellows. We borrow money, clothes, cars, handbags, phrases (even though they’re rarely returned) and even children.
I have borrowed many things in my life. Mostly paper and catchphrases, but some important things, too.
When Fil first moved here, she wore a ring with a pentacle on the band. Around the band are three lines with arrows at each end. All things, three fold. Life in three stages all pointing towards the most basic, most primal. This ring symbolized a lot of our core beliefs, a deep respect for the presence that resonates through our lives, and for the power within nature. The three stages of life, or in Celtic mythos, waxing and waning of womanhood holds a deep and fast truth in my marrow. Unlike my lucky #7, three is a deeply powerful and spiritual number for me. Not just that the mother goddess goes through three stages (maiden, mother and crone) that represent the passage of our changes, but that I want at least three children and that I was raised in a three person house hold – two unwavering parents and myself.
I took these symbols out of her ring and held onto them, digesting their impact on what I felt was the destiny of our relationship. From the moment I met her, something shifted inside of me and all felt calm and right. I passed through turbulent waters because of this calmness. She has held me sway, buffeted against the harshness of all things. Some things are just too obvious to ignore.
That first night as she held me in my bed and I felt the peace creep through my body and every muscle went slack, my fingers found her ring and touched it lightly. That something inside me surged up, through the calmness and the encompassing peace and burst from me like wing’ed thing. It made my heart ache, a soreness I had never felt before. In that moment, I didn’t have time to evaluate the racing thoughts or surging emotions… instead I succumbed to sleep, exhausted from the day.
Not too long after that day, I’d say a month or so later, I claimed that ring as my own. Since then it has found a place on my left thumb and Fil puts it there every night, usually before she slides my Claddagh into place. The ring is bent from being played with by the cats or lost under something heavy, but it still holds the same importance in my mind. Though its religion is seperate, its meaning is similar to my Claddagh, where two hands hold one heart – three, again – and where Fil has given them both to me.
**This post is a part of the blog carnival going on over at The OTHER Mother as a part of Freedom to Marry Week.**
