rocks and memories

this morning i was busy gathering small stones off the back 'lawn' (we are in a drought so the actual grass is minimal) and moving them to another part of the yard, my 'rock garden' area. a few years ago, i did the same thing. the wind can blow something fierce here in the desert southwest so these could be the same stones i moved around once before. or the wind could've uncovered new ones. the ataxia has affected my balance--i now use my rollling walker when i am in the backyard--but my love of exploring every inch of the yard is as strong as ever. i have found all sorts of  nifty treasures in my yard....megan's claddagh ring from high school. a tiger's eye pendant. pieces of broken pottery (i found a piece of my favorite china tea cup that went missing years ago). a polished piece of carnelian that a black crow left in my bird bath. today i unearthed a quarter.

near my bird bath are some brightly painted rocks. my grandson, dominic, painted them the summer he was 5. he was bored so i got out my acrylics, a big brush and some large rocks. he had a blast. i remember visiting megan and dominic one july in alaska. dominic was almost 3. we went to girdwood and explored a gold mining site. i have always wanted to pan for gold but the river was roaring, the gold mining was done with hydraulics and was a high tech affair so i ended up teaching dominic to splash rocks in a nearby creek. we had a blast.

my dad was once the president of the rock and mineral society in keene, nh. he knows his rocks. my mom rides a bus to adult day services in springfield, vermont, three days a week. there is a large white boulder (granite? quartz? dad???) in the median of I-91 north between bellows falls and springfield that she loves. she calls it her rock. when we take rides together, mom loves to study the rock formations.  when gary's mom, eleanor, was alive, she loved rocks, too. if you went somewhere on vacation, she didn't want a souvenir....she asked for you to bring her back a rock.

my friend, margaret, gave me a piece of petrified wood once and i still have it. she used to winter in the california desert with her mom, mary. mary loved to hunt for arrowheads so margaret secretly scattered a few store bought arrowheads for her mom to find....i smile when i think of that. margaret's sister, aurelie, lives on cape cod but, instead of sea shells, she has heart-shaped stones, some that her kids collected for her when they were small...adorning her windowsills and table tops. when i find heart-shaped stones, i think of aurelie.

when i was a kid, my parents took our family (9 kids then) to the beach most every summer sunday. my father would slip away alone and return excitedly, claiming to have discovered magic rocks. he convinced us, and a few gullible onlookers, that sea water interacted with certain rocks and turned their center's into jelly. so we would crawl around, biting stones within a circle that he had drawn, searching for the candy rocks. it was thrilling to find them. years later, i discovered a bag of candy rocks in his workshop and i was devastated. i'd believed that salt water turned rocks into candy as strongly as i'd believed in santa claus.

i discovered the custom of leaving behind small stones when you visit someone's grave and i love this. my sister, cheryl, is buried in the cemetary in saxtons river, overlooking the house we once lived in. my last visit there, with my sister pam, i left a heart-shaped stone by the headstone. bouquets of flowers? when i die, i hope that stones are left behind for me, too.