THE LOVE-GOES-TOWARD-LOVE RING
“It was the most passionate and tender connection I'd ever known.”
Beatrice fell for me near the end of our MFA program at Sarah Lawrence. I’d been crushing on her for two years. Always the most creative person in the room, Bea could write a song in the morning, rehearse a play in the afternoon, spend the evening making soup for a lonely friend (me, often) and end the day teaching her parakeet a new trick. Her gaze was so intense it made me dizzy, she was so wicked-funny she made me pee. And she wanted me. It was the most passionate and tender connection I'd ever known. But when we graduated, in May ’98, and she set off for Europe with her family, I was sure she'd dump me the second she returned.
The day she flew home, as we’d arranged, we met under the clock at Grand Central. I’d never before kissed a woman in public. I thought, This is my soulmate. Back at her apartment, in Yonkers, she slid a silver ring onto my finger. Knowing my obsession with Shakespeare, she’d bought it in Stratford-Upon-Avon; etched in the band were the words LOVE GOES TOWARD LOVE, from Romeo & Juliet (“Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books, but love from love, toward school with heavy looks”). We were sitting on her little bed. She said, “I almost got a pair of gold rings, but I didn’t want to scare you.” It takes a lot to make me blush. That did.
I swore I’d never take it off, but about a year later we chose proper matching wedding rings at a jewelry store in Chelsea before registering with the city as domestic partners. We had “LGTL” etched inside them. I tried to wear the Love-Goes-Toward-Love ring on my right hand, but it was too tight, so it stayed mostly in my jewelry box while Bea and I spent the next decade creating a home, building a life in theater and eventually starting a family.
2011 was the year same-sex marriage finally became legal in New York. It was also the year Beatrice was diagnosed with advanced uterine cancer. That November we had a little wedding in our living room with the judge (who’d been my childhood friend), his wife, Bea’s parents, my mom and brother and our little boy, who would be three and a half when Bea left this earth only six months later, in May of 2012.
After she died, I took both our wedding rings to the jeweler who’d made them and, because Bea loved birds, asked him to melt them down and create a bird pendant, which I wear to this day. But I hid the Love-Goes-Toward-Love ring away. Looking at it tended to destroy me, though there were times when the only thing that soothed my grief was taking it out of its hiding place and slipping it on my finger.
I’m remarried now. I adore my husband and the white-gold band I wear on my left hand. I often forget about my first ring for months on end. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, I’ll flash on it and a black hole of loss sucks me right out of my present life and threatens to lock me in longing for a late-summer day sitting on a twin bed in Yonkers.
Until now, grief has made it impossible for me to talk about the Love-Goes-Toward-Love ring. An overwhelming compulsion to explain every nuance of its history, and the certainty that I’m not up to the task, has stopped my mouth. But I’ve kept the ring, for our son. I imagine him one day, grown and happy, placing it on his love’s finger and thinking, This is my soulmate. And I aspire to find a way to tell him of the days when four words etched into a simple silver band managed to encapsulate the whole world of his mothers’ love of language, of art, and for each other.
—Gretchen M. Michelfeld
Gretchen M. Michelfeld is an essayist, dramatist and occasional poet who lives with her family in Jackson Heights, Queens. Her award-winning feature film, As Good as You, is available on EPIX, iTunes and Prime.