Owl Singer and I took an art class today. We twisted wire around beads until we created rings.

I don’t like to wear rings that much. I have my wedding set, thank you very much. I don’t need anything else.

But as I was making these rings today, I realized that I needed these. I needed to make them. To wear them. To surrender to the bits and pieces of soft metal that with manipulation and time and a little hammering would harden and stiffen.

In the last fifteen years, maybe a bit more, I have become reluctant to try new things. I want to say expermient, but that creates a whole new level of Just what are you saying? and I really don’t want to invite that.

Yes, I have hiked three hundred miles of the Appalachian Trail. Yes I have travelled to areas that are completey unfamiliar to me. Yes I have done some things.

Some.

But when my Beloved and I moved, when fractures threaded their way into the framework of our family life, when my brother was diagnosed with a horrible disease and that caused the tectonic plates to shift even more, I chose a quiet rhythm of life.

Garden but don’t harvest.

Weed but don’t really plant anything in the bare places.

Walk dogs in circles around the town, following the same grooves that I found and have now followed for the last five or so years.

Teach the same literature and read good books. But don’t delve.

Don’t rest in the water too much or the water will slip into my ears and blur the noises of the world around me and I might lose my place and then I will be lost, way out in the sea, and surrounded by dorsal fins.

I walked in ever tightening circles and stared at my toes with their cracked and ripped up nails. I bought the same pair of sandals over and over because they were comfortable.

In a way, I stopped living because it was so hard to find that strength and that will and that drive.

I just kind of floated in a sensory deprivation tank and waited for the moment when I could find the bottom and plant my feet and step out.

Today, I made a trio of rings. Yes. I made jokes about the One True Ring and Galadriel and the rings of power. Come on. What do you expect?

I also paced the main hallway in my house as I waited for Owl Singer to arrive and squashed down the anxiety that thrummed in the back of my throat because, God forbid I might make a mistake.

When Owl Singer finally arrived, we braved the frigid walk as the artic cold dove out of the north and scorched my town with such chilly winds that my skin burned. Even though we walked under a panorama of blue sky and lazing white clouds, we hurried as much as the icy sidewalks allowed to seek a warm place.

After window shopping in a small bodega like convenience store, we shifted down to the house where our art class was being held. We spent a long moment in the gallery admiring the paintings, sketches, and varying artistic projects that were for sale. And, when our teacher found us, we strolled into the classroom and took our places along the long, heavily resined table.

Three types of wire. Copper, stainless steel, sterling silver. Three sets of beads. An 8 mm. A 6 mm. Two even smaller ones…2 mm? I have no idea. Four tools in front of each felt mat: a mandrel, a wire cutter, a barrel pliers, and a flat nose pliers. I don’t even know if I’m using the right words for the tools. If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong. The world will not sunder or explode.

In the end, with each type of wire, we were taught different techniques of wire wrapping and design. Because the plastic mandrels had a groove along the back of them (to hold the beads in place), my rings all have flat bottoms. And, in some places, the wire wrapping is more like wire haphazard looping.

But, in the end, I created three rings that I wore throughout the entire ring making process.

I have been living for so long with my fears that they feel too familiar to me. They are so very much like little baby birds, half feathered, fallen out of the nest, and chasing me around the yard begging for food. I keep putting them back in safe places, shushing them while I scan my yard for snakes or my neighbors half feral cats, and I fret about leaving them out where the world can smash them down.

But that means I’m stuck in my yard with my beautiful tomatoes that I won’t harvest or won’t eat because what if they don’t taste good? In the meantime, the days keep shifting and moving and the horizons stay the same and I walk in circles that I recognize and hate.

Two weeks ago, just after the first snow of the season, I had to drive three hours on the interstate. In the past, I would have been terrified. For multiple reasons, I had the radio off and drove in silence, listening to the thrumming of the tires on the pavement. I drove up and over a mountain, past signs warning of black ice. And I was terrified. Not going to lie. But I dropped my speed and kept going and maintained safe distances between my car and the others around me.

I did my best. And my car is still a bit grimy from all the salt.

But it’s not dented, dinged, or damaged.

I did it.

Just like today, I created three rings which resemble, to varying degrees, the samples the teacher had created and laid out on the table. I wrapped wire around itself and strung beads in different places and used four different tools, several of which I had had limited prior experience.

And I poked Owl Singer with my mandrel and spilled my beads on the carpeted floor and when I snipped my sterling silver wire it flew away and I think it might have hit the woman sitting in front of me (sorry).

And I threaded my rings up and over my fingers and took pictures and sent them to my children because I was proud of what I had created. Proud of taking that simple chance and making plenty of mistakes that did not cause the Earth to implode or explode or erode.

I’m taking another art class next month. I’m making a wire wrapped fidget necklace. Literally, I might lose my marbel(s). And that’s just the start.