My Wedding Ring

I've started wearing my wedding ring again. On my right hand, of course. Oddly enough, in the past, when I've tried to put it on my right hand, I've always had trouble getting it on and off. Like my right ring finger was bigger than my left ring finger. I guess, even though it didn't look like it, I must have had some fat on my fingers or something, because now the ring easily slides on and off. When I first took it off, back when I lived in Dearborn, for some reason I put it in my medicine cabinet. Probably just because I was in the bathroom at the time and I knew that if it just sat on the bathroom counter it would eventually get gross and probably become stuck to the counter (I've never been a particularly clean person - I'm working on that). So I put it in there to keep it safe. But the medicine cabinet became its home. I was used to seeing it in there everytime I brushed my teeth. It got to be something of a ritual: open the cabinet, acknowledge the symbol of my failed marriage, grab the Colgate, close the cabinet.

I was so used to seeing the ring in my medicine cabinet that, when I moved back to California, the ring went right back into the medicine cabinet when I unpacked. It has remained there, keeping my toothpaste company, ever since. Right up until two days ago, that is. Some compulsion I can't quite explain caused me to reach in, grab it, and slide it onto my right ring finger. Unlike the last time I tried that, it slid right on. And there it sits even now. Perhaps I'm wearing it because it has ceased to be a symbol of my failed marriage. Perhaps now it represents positive change, and the possibility for new life, and, Lord willing, new love.