On Friday, I went to the mailbox, and found that V had ordered me a gift.
I wasn’t expecting it.
My newest piece of jewelry
V says that when he saw this anklet on display, he thought of me, and he thought that I should have it. He also claims that it seemed to be the only one that they had that struck him this way. (Which is odd, since I don’t wear a heckuva lot of jewelry, so neither of us are prone to buying jewelry very often.)
It’s sterling silver, and V tells me that the beads are amber.
Personally, that would be interesting, but that’s not what surprised me about his unexpected gift of jewelry to me: it’s the wolf that surprises me.
V said that other anklets had dolphin, flower, or bird charms, or, barring that — more beading — but that this one was the only one that had a wolf.
And it was the last, perhaps, only one.
So he bought it, and had it mailed to the house.
So, I put it on, and I find that I can’t stop thinking about wolves, and especially about exactly why he’d been drawn to pick the wolf.
I mean, if he’d chosen something with a bird charm (perhaps something raven or sparrow like), *that* would make a lot more sense to me, because I’m always thinking and talking about crows and ravens…or the fact that we’ve had a few interesting interactions with birds lately…
But a wolf?
I was puzzled and a bit surprised, because I don’t talk about wolves at all nearly as much as I’d talk about birds or horses…and yet, it’s not as if I don’t like wolves. I do.
More so, and here’s the interesting part: it’s not as if I hadn’t been thinking of wolves lately, it’s just that those thoughts weren’t something I was sharing with V. (A few days before, I had shared a text with Heather S that described a strange dream that I had in 1997…but I’d never told V about the wolves in the dream; just that I shared a text of it with Heather.)
And yet, there it was.
He couldn’t explain it either.
So, first, I thought, as I had done this before, that the wolf might have attracted V because it was his attempt to find something ‘Morrighan-like’ or ‘Freyja-ish’ because we had been talking a few days before about how I’d thought of the Morrighan as my patron goddess for years, but it wasn’t because it was maybe, possibly Freyja…but even then, he would know that a bird would have been the more appropriate choice for either of those two with the options that he’d described as being in front of him. (Though he also knows that Freyja likes cats, too.)
He did admit on the Freyja note, that he did like — and thought that I would like –that it had amber. But that was secondary to his attraction to it.
So, then I thought that he’d picked it because it was ‘different’ or ‘only’ or some such, but he did admit that the amber was the only thing that had any connection with his thoughts about my spirituality.
So, not the wolf, the amber. But there were other ones with amber, he said.
But still, a wolf.
I then told him about Loki’s wife/consort, Angrboda – whom he admitted that he’d never heard of before — and I even showed him the simple (and I think I find somewhat oddly adorable) picture of Angrboda from K’s D’Aulaire’s Norse Myths, to help him out with a visualization of Her, but he shrugs.
Does she have something to do with wolves? he asked.
To which I replied, Well, They had a kid who was a wolf… and I pointed him to D’Aulaire’s toothy grey blobbish rendition of the Fenris-puppy.
He shrugged.
To which K helpfully added, See, Dad? She’s a wolf-mother!
And now, so are you, K giggled at me. You’re a mom…with a wolf!
Great band, V grins.
~~~
Do you like it?, V asks.
I nod.
So I hope that you’ll think of me when you look at it, V said.
And think of me too, blurted K, just wanting to be involved in the conversation.
~~~
But then, there’s today…
And things have been grumpy and difficult.
So, the only thing that I can think of when I look at the anklet today is that it is a reminder that when things get rough…
This mother gets thrown to the wolves.
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