"The World is Our Oyster Doris", Sam Toft
So yesterday, I was the privileged and honoured guest at one of the greatest rites of passage of any woman. Sure there is your first date, your first kiss, your first period, your first heartbreak, your first credit card, your first perm, your thirteenth birthday, your sixteenth birthday, your first car, your first baby. All significant, emotionally charged, symbolic milestones is any woman's life. But there is one other that I'm convinced almost any woman would remember if you asked her.
The day she got her ears pierced.
I remember that day. Sitting in the white vinyl chair at the cosmetics counter at the Bay, my mother looking on wistfully, strangers passing by smiling with their own memories, some looking on tentatively knowing "the little pinch" is about to come, but all witnesses to this sacred event. It really is only a pinch. When it was done, I really felt like I was taller, older, more independent, more of a woman. And surely my boobs had grown just a little more sitting in that chair.
So yesterday my bf turned to me and said, "should I get my ears pierced today". With my heart racing, my pupils dilating, butterflies fluttering and one big grin I said, "let's do it". Now, my bf is thirty-five years old. But more about that later. We set out to find the perfect ear-pierceologist. We couldn't go to just anybody. This was a sacred event, and it had to be perfect. The perfect location, the perfect and most skilled craftsman, the perfect little pair of earrings. Only the most perfect would do. We searched high and low. We surfed the net. We called the local mall. We put out calls to our peeps to do some research, to investigate, to consult with their peeps and get back to us.
Well it turns out that there is no such thing as an ear-pierceologist, although we both think there should be. And after all that, we ended up in the resident tacky costume jewelery and knickknack store for tweens and teens under a neon pink sign that read "Your Ear Piercing Specialists". Whatever. So bf hopped in the vinyl white chair, and after several phone consultations with her younger but ever so stylish sister, the perfect studs are chosen. Titanium and cubic zirconia disks. Hammer set. Classic and elegant. After all the necessary paperwork and orientation, the hair is clipped back and under Natalie's skill and precision (and patience - I made her redo the marker targets three times), the studs became sparkling little jewels in bf's ears. Knowing her issues with being embarrassed by unnecessary and unwanted attention in public places, I tried to keep the clapping and giggling and jumping and hugging to a minimum, but it wasn't easy. Afterwards, I bought her ice cream and we celebrated.
These events in a woman's life are symbolic of so many things. This is no less true for my bf. It was a further step along in the journey of embracing her feminine self. Coming alive, embracing life and all of it's experiences after years of numbing out in an addiction.
But this had to have been the most beautiful meaning of all. At fourteen, when most girls are experiencing sacred rites of passage like ear piercing and so many others, bf was coping with the sudden and unexpected death of her beloved dad. She went to school one morning, not knowing that that would be the last time she would she him. She describes that day as the day that her childhood ended. Nothing would ever feel playful and carefree and frivolous again. Instead she was consumed by all things adult. Grief and responsibility and self-appointed caregiver to her younger siblings. Life would be like that for many years. But gratefully this is the season of spring. New birth, healing, growth, redemption, restoration, freedom.
So today, we took a step back in time, like we would have if we had known each other when we were thirteen or fourteen, giggling best friends off to the mall on a Saturday afternoon, about to embark on one of the great adventures of female adolescence. What a gift that we could experience something together as thirty-something best friends that we thought we'd missed out on. And what an amazing gift for bf, to reclaim this part of her adolescence, to be given back even just a piece of something that seemed to have been robbed from her all those years ago. Something was restored, put in place, made right. She said she felt different, and I knew it to be so. I could feel it. If my heart could have burst out of my chest, it would have. Deep deep joy and love of the purest, truest sense.
I love you, my bf.
The world is your oyster.
