The Rock People

unnamedI dedicate this to my Mom, my sister and to ‘R’ and M’. Some of my favourite Rock People…

I love rocks. I love knowing that they are permanent: as ancient as the earth. I am acutely conscious that they have survived ice ages, dinosaurs, cavemen, Vikings, famines and days without number. When I go to a beach, my eyes automatically scan downward in search of a particularly appealing treasure to tuck away as I walk. By the time I am ready to leave, my pockets are usually bulging with them. Before leaving, I carefully lay out my treasures and do a final triage: picking out the ones that I deem to have earned the distinction of being special enough to carry back to my home. And I always gently lay out the ones I have decided to leave behind, for the next person to discover. Or not.

I have a pretty ceramic dish on the coffee table in my living room where I keep the finest of my prizes. The ones that are as round and as smooth as golf balls. The ones with beautiful, intricate patterns and colours. The ones that are dappled with myriad dots, like a bird’s egg. One in the shape of a heart. One that is perfectly rectangular. I usually remember the beach or the riverbed where I found each one. Many of them come with a story attached; a memory from the day when I found them.

I recognise the people like me – the Rock People – by the way visitors to my home react to my little collection. The majority of visitors do not even notice. The Rock People though, will respectfully ask if it is okay to touch before carefully picking up and examining each treasure in turn.

As they silently examine my little cache, I always feel the quiet reverence of the Rock People: the kindred spirits who, like me, are not seeing ‘just a rock’ but rather, are touching an ancient piece of the earth: something beautiful and permanent and lasting.

Something that will be here long after we are gone…

Patti Moore Wilson/© wednesdayschildca.wordpress.com

 

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Author: Patti Moore Wilson, wednesdayschild2

I write what I feel. And I rarely know exactly what I feel until I write. I have lived long enough to have known many joys and many sorrows. I have made many mistakes; I have forgiven myself for a few… I have learned that there are lessons in every step of this journey, if we only take the time to pay attention… I hope you will feel free to pick and choose the stories that resonate for you…

33 thoughts on “The Rock People”

  1. I’m enchanted by rocks with different color strata. I used to have quite a collection, including a fossil I found along railroad tracks in Jacksonville, Fla. When you hold a rock, you hold proof of our own impermanence…

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    1. Oh, ‘enchanted’ is just the right word…when we emptied mom’s house last year, my Mom had a beautiful fossil that she gave me permission to give away (hidden inside a rock that pulls apart). So I gave it (and a few of her other rock prizes) to a 5-year old boy I know who accepted them with reverence and wide, wondering eyes…😊

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  3. I’m a rock fiend. I like to pick up pebbles from everywhere I go. I love geodes and meteorites. Rose stones and even bits of sea glass. I wonder at the stories they could tell and i can get very fanciful with it. Rock fairs are one of my very favourite things too if for no other reason than just to see things from places I haven’t been

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    1. There are ROCK fairs??? I had no idea… now that they are on my radar, I will be sure to go if I hear about any. I love sea glass, too: keep some in an old milk bottle on my window sill. Always on the lookout for the elusive cobalt blue 😊 And I, too, wonder at the stories they could tell…😊

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  4. Oh my goodness…I have SO many rocks in my house, just like you! I did a volunteer project at my son’s school with flat rocks that the kids could write words on, like “love,” “gratitude,” etc, and had a ton left over, so those rocks are scattered around my house, as well, some with words written on them and some left plain for me to mentally attach my own words and meanings to them. When I’m super stressed out, one of those rocks goes into my pocket for me to squeeze and ground myself during the day. 🙂

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    1. I never would have imagined that there were so many people out there who felt as I do 😊 My sister paints some of her small flat rocks in beautiful, whimsical colours. She also puts words on some of them (the one with ‘Fern’ engraved on it in my photograph was in memory of our dog Fernand). I also occasionally carry a small rock around to squeeze – had one in my pocket for months after my divorce…

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    1. My sister and I definitely got our love of rocks from our Mom. We found a TON of them when we emptied her house last year when she and our stepfather could no longer care for themselves. I used to keep rocks in our fish tank, too. Despite all the work, makes me yearn for another fish tank. I bet our cat would love to watch the fish…

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  6. Wow, that is one wonderful collection of beautiful rocks! When I was a child, I collected rocks too, usually from beaches as well. I considered them a sort of remembrance of the place where I got them from. But I don’t think I’ve ever considered them in the light you’ve shared here, about how they’re permanent and will outlast us. That’s a pretty deep and humbling thought. I think the next time I’m at the beach, I’ll start looking for interesting rocks again.

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    1. Thank you SO much… Mom was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and while still fairly cognizant, we ARE slowly losing little bits of her. So glad she left me and my sister a love of something so permanent. She has not been able to visit me in several years (I always go to her). I know she would love my little collection very much…

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