Ring a ding
It's been a while since I've updated this journal, but here I am.
When we were in Ireland on our anniversary trip, we visited the town of Kilkenny, and after seeing the castle there, we went across the street to the local gallery, and artisan guild. One of the shops was a local jeweler, and one of the things they sold was the Claddah Ring (yes, I know, I'm citing wikipedia, but I'm feeling lazy). Up until this point, it's what I've always referred to as an "Irish Wedding Band". Toby and I asked to look at them, Toby asking if I was interested in replacing my wedding band/ engagement ring combo with a single ring. I asked if I did, would Toby want to replace his wedding band as well, so we still had a matching set. He was surprised at the question (I guess he had been thinking that he would get me a Claddah ring while we were in Ireland, anyway, but hadn't thought of the possibility of one for himself.)
We decided to go ahead and treat ourselves to new wedding bands, a suitable thing for a 10 year anniversary, I think. The jeweler who was helping us wanted to see if he had the right size rings - rather than having him measure our fingers, we just handed over our current wedding bands. He had one the right size for Toby, but apparently I have very thin fingers. He measured my ring, then measured it again, and said "wow, that's small." He pulled the smallest Claddagh ring he had, and said he would have to resize it.
When we went back an hour later to pick up the rings, the woman who helped us (the jeweler had gone to lunch), also commented on how small the ring was.
It is weird how quickly I've come accustomed to wearing this ring. Some of my previous ring wearing habits have waned (notable taking off my pair of rings, and setting them so they overlapped, or so the diamond was flat on the table in the center of my wedding band; also spinning my engagement ring around my finger - the Claddagh doesn't really spin). I still feel for the ring on the inside of my hand with my thumb, an almost absent minded gesture I learned I had when I forgot my wedding band one day. The ring doesn't quite sit centered, if I just leave it, the hands, heart and crown drift around, towards my pinky, so I've picked up a new habit of righting the ring so it sits centered.
One silly little thing I worried about with switching out the rings was losing the personality of the two I'd been wearing. There are small imperfections in each of the rings (a small dark spot on one of the prongs holding the stone in my engagement ring - which I oriented my ring by placing that side to face my heart), and a line one the inside of the wedding band from where Toby's father resized it for me (I wore the ring so the line was between my pinky and ring finger.) Luckily my new ring isn't perfect, either. It, too, has a line on the inside from being resized, and a small indentation on the left hand, perhaps from the device that held the ring while it was being resized. While I can't really orient the direction of my ring based on these, I feel relieved that it is not perfect- that the ring has it's own personality, and that I can use these features to always identify it as my own.
I meant to talk about other things here, as well, a general update on me, but I think I'm going to leave it at that, as I had more to say about a little ring than I thought.
When we were in Ireland on our anniversary trip, we visited the town of Kilkenny, and after seeing the castle there, we went across the street to the local gallery, and artisan guild. One of the shops was a local jeweler, and one of the things they sold was the Claddah Ring (yes, I know, I'm citing wikipedia, but I'm feeling lazy). Up until this point, it's what I've always referred to as an "Irish Wedding Band". Toby and I asked to look at them, Toby asking if I was interested in replacing my wedding band/ engagement ring combo with a single ring. I asked if I did, would Toby want to replace his wedding band as well, so we still had a matching set. He was surprised at the question (I guess he had been thinking that he would get me a Claddah ring while we were in Ireland, anyway, but hadn't thought of the possibility of one for himself.)
We decided to go ahead and treat ourselves to new wedding bands, a suitable thing for a 10 year anniversary, I think. The jeweler who was helping us wanted to see if he had the right size rings - rather than having him measure our fingers, we just handed over our current wedding bands. He had one the right size for Toby, but apparently I have very thin fingers. He measured my ring, then measured it again, and said "wow, that's small." He pulled the smallest Claddagh ring he had, and said he would have to resize it.
When we went back an hour later to pick up the rings, the woman who helped us (the jeweler had gone to lunch), also commented on how small the ring was.
It is weird how quickly I've come accustomed to wearing this ring. Some of my previous ring wearing habits have waned (notable taking off my pair of rings, and setting them so they overlapped, or so the diamond was flat on the table in the center of my wedding band; also spinning my engagement ring around my finger - the Claddagh doesn't really spin). I still feel for the ring on the inside of my hand with my thumb, an almost absent minded gesture I learned I had when I forgot my wedding band one day. The ring doesn't quite sit centered, if I just leave it, the hands, heart and crown drift around, towards my pinky, so I've picked up a new habit of righting the ring so it sits centered.
One silly little thing I worried about with switching out the rings was losing the personality of the two I'd been wearing. There are small imperfections in each of the rings (a small dark spot on one of the prongs holding the stone in my engagement ring - which I oriented my ring by placing that side to face my heart), and a line one the inside of the wedding band from where Toby's father resized it for me (I wore the ring so the line was between my pinky and ring finger.) Luckily my new ring isn't perfect, either. It, too, has a line on the inside from being resized, and a small indentation on the left hand, perhaps from the device that held the ring while it was being resized. While I can't really orient the direction of my ring based on these, I feel relieved that it is not perfect- that the ring has it's own personality, and that I can use these features to always identify it as my own.
I meant to talk about other things here, as well, a general update on me, but I think I'm going to leave it at that, as I had more to say about a little ring than I thought.