My mother took off her rings when she slept. They were there in a precarious little pile when I went to wake her during those endless drowsy afternoons, a stack of silver always at my eye level. The light was turning blue but her face was still illuminated slightly; I couldn’t see her breathe but I could see the red blush of sleep on her cheeks. I knew if I woke her up she would roll over and look at me through half-closed eyes, maybe ask what I wanted, but I could never find it in myself to wake her. She stayed rosy and removed in her sleep and I would leave as quietly as I came, as quietly as I could.
I only remember her taking off her rings regularly on two occasions: to sleep and to shower. She kept them on at all other times, even when she washed her hands, and when I was a child and even now I thought those rings must have been some of the cleanest that little porcelain sink had ever seen.
And she had some of the cleanest hands I had ever seen, although at that point in my childhood I hadn’t seen very many. I had always thought they would be beautiful without the rings, but with them they were something else: when she stretched out her fingers her palm was almost too arched, and the dull silver caught the light in a way I have yet to recreate, as hard as I try. Since those years of watching her as she slept, waiting to wake her, I’ve looked through high end stores and flea markets to find rings like those of my mother, but they never quite gleam enough.
Everything is brighter in memory; I’ve always liked the way silver catches the light. Those rings were a part of her, a continuation of her knuckle, a necessary bump when I grabbed her hand in the dark. Their cool, smooth texture was reassuring when she touched my forehead to feel for a fever, and I loved to hear the way they clicked when she tapped her fingers on the table as she thought. They were beautiful and rare - I didn’t realize until later, when I started looking for ones similar - but she always let me try them on, whenever I asked, as often as that was. Of course, they slipped over my round little fingers with plenty of room to spare. But the weight on my fingers of the silver band and blue-green stone was comforting enough. In those days she took me with her most places out of necessity. We went to the farmers market in the summer, me holding her hand and by extension her rings as I watched her shoulder her way through the crowd holding a bag filled with bread. We went to bookstores in the winter, me craning my neck back so the braid she always did in my hair fell down my spine as I watched her choose a book and then put it back. We took the train in all seasons, me dozing in and out of sleep as she absentmindedly rubbed my shoulder.
She took me with her to most places, and this is how I ended up at the dinner party. One of her friends from college was hosting, and we lived down the street, and the friend that usually watched me was going as well. I was hardly old enough to pronounce any of the titles of the books they talked about, let alone attend - I was normally asleep by the time they poured the second glass of wine - but my mother took me along anyway.
I watched her get ready, trying on her rings while she sipped tea in between visits to the closet to try on different dresses. I touched the cover of the newest book she’d acquired at the dollar bookstore two subway stops and a block away and tried to puzzle out how to say the title. By the time I had hit the subtitle, she was ready, hair braided down her back like mine and tea fully sipped and the rings on her fingers, as always, as ever.
I don’t remember the actual event, or what I ate, or the amount of times I fell asleep, although my mother told me later that it was a little drawn out, that we had some type of greens and fish but I had only eaten peas, and that I fell asleep many times. I remember there was music playing, and then there was not. I remember laughter. I remember her taking off her rings. This hosting friend had a small piano against the wall. My memory of this event abruptly cuts back in when someone says Sylvie, play something, please, play and I realize that it is my mother they are talking to, my mother walking up to the piano.
She took her rings off. She sat down to play. I don’t remember what she played, or the way it sounded, but I remember how I felt: like my eyes were closed while they were open, like I had walked into the rain without flinching, like the first time I heard birds in the spring. Years later, after I had found piles of music book in a box in the top of her closet, after I had begged her to let me take lessons, after I had played some of the pieces in that very box, I asked her what piece she had played that night of the dinner party. She smiled, pushed her now-gray hair back behind her, took a ring off her finger and spun it around. I was old now, and I had rings of my own, but I still couldn’t help but watch the flash of silver as it rotated around her finger.
And she said that piece wasn’t anything. She said she made it up.