The Invisible Wedding Ring

During a Zoom meeting today, I heard the term “ring pillow.” Ring pillow? Apparently, it is a small cushion used in a wedding ceremony to hold the rings until the exchange. I see. So such a thing exists.

Since I never had a ceremony myself, I can hardly even picture that kind of scene. Nor have I ever felt that wedding rings were something to be treated so carefully, so reverently. In our house, they were much more practical.

We received 50,000 yen as a wedding gift. So we thought, well, perhaps we should buy rings. That was about it. We bought them later. In a sense, they were a report on how the gift money had been spent. A metal alibi.

For a while, I wore mine. But when I washed the dishes, it would sometimes slip off because of the detergent. If it fell into the drain, that would be a nuisance. Still, taking it off carefully every time, putting it somewhere safe, then putting it back on again just as carefully— That didn’t feel right to me.

It felt as if my life were being organized around the ring. To live in service of an object, just to keep it safe? That seemed, somehow, like the master and servant had traded places.

In the end, I stopped wearing it without even noticing when. My wife had left hers off long before that. So where was the ring? I suddenly wondered and went looking.

It was lying in the drawer with my handkerchiefs. Not in a jewelry box. Not in a safe. In the handkerchief drawer. Somehow, that felt just right.

I tried putting it on. It still fit. Interestingly, only the ring finger of my left hand had remained slightly thinner. Even though I no longer wear it, that finger alone was still shaped for a ring.

I took it off. But my body still remembers the time when it was there. Even when the object is gone, something remains. Or perhaps it is precisely because the object has fulfilled its role that we notice what remains.

The physical wedding ring lies in the handkerchief drawer. But the invisible wedding ring is still there, in my body. That was what came to mind.

A ring pillow and I will probably never have much to do with each other. For our ring to sleep, the spot beside the handkerchiefs is just right.

#InvisibleWeddingRing #WeddingRing #MemoryInTheBody #MinimalLife #Danshari #LettingGo #EverydayEssay