📖 Drift and Settle

Same Walk Different Shoes

“Same Walk, Different Shoes” is a Substack community writing project that Ben Wakeman organized as a practical exercise in empathy. The premise is simple. A group of writers anonymously contribute a personal story of an experience that changed their life. Each participating writer is randomly assigned one of these story prompts to turn into a short story. The story you are about to read is one from this collection. You can find all the stories from the participating writers at Catch & Release. Enjoy the walk with us.

Greetings from Finland. We’re on a pilgrimage¹ here to experience the great Finnish architect Alvar Aalto’s iconic buildings. We’re also enjoying marvelous design, charming towns and landscapes, nourishing food and customs (sauna, anyone?).

The prompt for these stories involved something left behind, touching on the aftermath of loss. On this trip, I’ve already lost a pair of sunglasses and a raven charm off a bracelet that broke. That raven has traveled with me for five years and now he’s lost in Helsinki’s meditation Chapel of Silence. Fitting, somehow.

---

Before she left us
she chose the music for her memorial.
Before her eyes, warm brown, 
silvered to newborn blue
and she traveled away,

she gave me the ring.
‘Before they have to cut it off,’
she said with stars in her eyes, fingers shaped
by a lifetime of cooking, caring, and creating, fingers
swollen by illness and medicine and time.

She slipped her gold band etched with stars 
over my trembling finger.
Set with three tiny pearls and
inside, the hidden promise 
JY to ES for always against my skin.

‘It’s yours now,’ she said.
‘You are loved.
‘You will find your place.
‘Believe me.’
I did not believe her, but

I wore the ring. 
During the years I didn’t, couldn’t, eat—
still not believing—
the ring drifted
from middle finger to index finger to thumb.

Until finally
it settled on a chain hidden beneath my shirt.
When he yanked and broke the chain,
the ring flew and clattered.
Then it traveled in my pocket away from him.

My mother never wore that ring
made elsewhere long ago of old stories and past lives.
Her ring—her life—was new, modern,
striving and climbing,
fitting in, getting on.

The ring with stars and tiny pearls
carried me through adolescence,
walked me down aisles—
aisles to entrance exams and graduations,
aisles to a marriage, a baptism followed by a funeral.

Flaked with dirt from the tiny white coffin, 
the ring carried me to a lawyer’s twenty-third-floor office, 
where we read papers, 
signed the annulment,
settled those affairs.

Before my move to a new city, then a new country,
before a second new city in another country,
before one cat, then another cat,
first one job, then a new job,
I had lived, briefly, my grandmother’s words:

‘You are loved.
‘You will find your place.
‘Believe me.’
Now, placeless, I slipped the ring from my finger, 
settled JY to ES for always alone in a dark drawer.

Until the ring asked to travel again with me 
after a difficult but rewarding year.
I visited old friends overseas
near where I had lived long ago.
I wore the ring down new aisles: bus, train, airplane, tram.

We viewed fields of purple iris
before a lake outing to seek serenity,
to rest in reverie,
soft slap of water on old wood
creak of oars in rusty fittings.

Quiet voices murmur, then lull.
Dragonflies dart, cicadas buzz.
A heron squawks, launches, glides.
My hand trails in cool water.
Eager water, thief and liberator.

When I was younger, my future loomed 
vast and unformed.
Everything happens faster now.
I thought I’d have more time—

Behind closed eyes, I see the ring 
slip from my finger and drift through sun-glint,
drift and settle in the lake mud,
settle among perch and mussels and pondweed.

Behind closed eyes, the white coffin 
sleeps in its womb of earth.
The ring, the stars and the pearls all say:
everything slips. And drifts.
And settles.

---

What did you think?

How was this for you? What surprised you or moved you? I sincerely appreciate your reading and value your thoughts, shares, and feedback.

If you enjoyed this story, please restack in Notes to help others find it. You can find all the stories from the participating writers at Catch & Release.

Each season, we donate 30% of paid subscriptions to a worthy environmental cause. This post helped to raise $68 for Indigenous Environmental Network, Through a variety of alliances, they’ve been promoting environmental and economic justice issues for over twenty years. Track past and current recipients here.

1. and 35th anniversary celebration trip