To Ring True

It is weird what we hold onto.

It is strange what things we value and give importance to.

I lost a ring yesterday.

It all started about a week ago, I was working on my tractor engine. Now this is not a modern tractor it is a classic. It is a David Brown Selectomatic 880. Now that might not mean a lot to a lot of people but you need to know that the DB of David Brown, is the same DB, in the Aston Martin DB5, that beautiful sleek silver machine that James Bond likes to drive. This tractor might not look like much but under the hood is a great engine. It is like lots of old things; the cosmetics might not suit the modern world but when you get under the skin there is a lot of heart and passion, worth preserving and worth looking after.

The bonnet of this tractor is like a guillotine and comes down with the same unforgiving slice. It is easy to forget that in days past you needed your senses, life back then was not about endlessly creating infinitely complex safety nets to protect ourselves. Well anyway, the bonnet whooshed downwards and my hand was not fast enough. What should have been a painful accident was saved by a ring on my finger. The ring was slightly crushed, the finger somewhat bruised but primarily it was a piece of charm and fortune to be thankful of.

It took two hours to get the slightly rectangular ring off my finger. It took grease and persistence. It also took grace and patience. Crudely reshaping it I slipped it on a different finger. The original digit needed a holiday to recover from its recent trauma. It fit snugly on its new temporary home albeit feeling slightly loose.

Everything was gravy until yesterday. Here I was a week after the swap, the newly positioned ring was now gone and I could not find it. I live on a large farm, all hope was gone, it could have fallen off anywhere. It was undeniably lost. I was devastated.

If you lose a piece of jewellery it needs to have an emotional meaning to be a true loss. Now bear with me. A ring lost that is only of financial value is like having your wallet pinched; painful but recoverable. Now, when I start to tell you about the significance of this ring, persevere because initially you may think less of me. The ring I lost was going to be my wedding ring. Many of you know I have never been married. I have come close, more than once but I have never ever got to stand waiting at the end of that church aisle.

So let me explain.

Distracting side note; I had a grandmother who rightly thought this was cursed jewellery; bad joo joo. This next part might explain why.

This ring for a long time just sat on a shelf. Immediately after it arrived it was placed somewhere safe and a number of bad events started to crash one after another into my life. My mother fell ill, was hospitalised then died. The night of her death my father was rushed into hospital and took many months to nurse back from the brink. I also lost my fiancée, this time not to any tragedy but to the mundane, boring, shallow events that bring some relationships crashing to an end. Through all of this that ring sat in the same place on that same shelf.

One day in either a truly lucid flash or under a moment of madness, I took the ring to an engravers and got it inscribed with a personal message of faith and strength. The message was indecipherable to anybody but me. Well that was okay as the message only had one reader.

What was the inscription?

Irrelevant; the message is not important right now just what it did.

It had the power to transform what the ring was. So I started to wear it. Not for what it was for but for what it now represented. Its old purpose was finally permanently lost. This ring now symbolised something positive. It symbolised the rational voice over madness; it was my light in the dark. I had an anchor with me at all times. It brought me comfort.

That comfort was now gone, now I felt just a space on my hand where it once was. I was rudderless and adrift on the water.

It made me angry.

A stupid material thing that I had bestowed so much power to.

A stupid material thing that I had let myself believe had me survive some pretty difficult years and times.

A stupid material thing whose vain inscribed message had let me overlook more important and valid truths.

Six hours after I had noticed the ring was lost, I hated how childish I had been. I hated how important I had allowed it to become. I rejected the ring and how foolish I was.

Then just like that, the following day changing my bedding, I found it. I was so happy, but only because it was familiar. Only because it felt right back on the finger. It felt like home.

But now it was just a ring.

I have stripped it magically of its power. Of course I will always be nostalgic over it. The strength it gave me has to go. The wisdom, the calm, the balance, the insight it provided during my darkest times sat only ever in one place, inside me.

Always.

Never in a ring of metal with a coded message.

This confession is fictional. Or is it?

Anyway, thank you for reading my story.

I publish my stuff independently for no other reason that I would rather these strange ideas that rattle around my head from time to time have a place to go. Hey, better out than in.

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I have more strange musings here, Enjoy.

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1st published on Vocal July 2021