After watching "Inception" this weekend I did my usual characteristic habit of finding something in the movie to take with me, and that something this time was to find a totem. In the movie each character has a totem, although you only see the totem belonging to three of them (two if you count living characters). I walked away from the movie thinking of tops, chess pieces, and the like, but then remembered: I walk around with totems all day long. AND I make them easy to carry.
Band
If you look at the top of this post, you'll see two pictures--one with a wedding band on a thumb, and the other a small dish of jewelry. I'll tackle the band first.
When my mother died, my brother and I received her wedding set. My brother got the engagement ring so that he could either pass down the ring in its entirety or take the chips from it and have them mounted in a new ring for his betrothed. (He went with the second option.) I received the band. From the beginning of receiving the ring I didn't know what to do with it--my mother had larger hands than mine, but putting it on a chain around my neck seemed dangerous; I feared the chain would break and the ring would be lost forever. So I decided to wear the ring on my left thumb. Since making this decision, I've had all kinds of feedback:
- Apparently gay women wear wedding bands on their thumbs to signify that they are gay. To my knowledge this is only a California or coastal deal--when I lived in the Midwest no one wore ANY rings on their thumbs. My brother ran into a similar California shut-down like this when he moved here, though...in the Midwest it's okay for men to wear suspenders under suits. Here, you're a gay man if you do that. Heartbreaking...my brother had some great-looking suspenders.
- Apparently some divorced or widowed women wear wedding bands on their thumbs.
I'm neither. But both have somewhat of a stigma to attracting me to single men. That's a shame. Because while my brother has calmly placed his suspenders in storage in the closet (get it? Heh, heh. These jokes write THEMSELVES, people), I refuse to put my mother away. It's the only thing of hers that I don't take off or store somewhere. I take off all of my other rings in every other situation (airports, medical, etc), but you have to ask me to take her ring off. And you have to hope that I don't put up a fight.
I wear it on my thumb because it's the only finger that fits, and I wear it on my left hand because supposedly that is the hand closest to the heart. But really, with my luck with men, I don't care if they think I'm a lesbian, divorced, or widowed.
Rings, Bracelet
In the dish in the other picture there are two rings and a bracelet. The bracelet comes from the Healer--when I wear it it's kind of like believing that someone outside of myself believes in me, and I like the simple design. The class ring (which is the one with the square black face) is worn on my left middle finger, the other woven ring is worn on my right ring finger. The woven ring is to remind me to find a decent romantic partner--it's been more effective as of late--sort of like a promise ring. The class ring is from university--when I'm scared or tense I will touch both that ring and my mother's ring with the fingers of my right hand and reach some kind of calm. (It's usually employed at the dentist or when I fly.)
The class ring comes from a design of a wedding ring in the movie "The Age of Innocence." I loved that movie and Edith Wharton at that time in my life and loved the ring that Archer presents to May, with a bold, square face. I wanted something that would match anything, so the stone is a black onyx.
My totems. I don't need tops or chess pieces. I'm wearing my totems.
Onward, dear reader.
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