TREASURES FROM THE EARTH

On the tables and shelves in my library room sits a small collection of stones. Mostly agates, a couple in their natural state, some cut into big chunks. Some are carved in thin pieces, candleholders I found on line from which a light glows in the background, adding spots of light to the candles that already dot the room. Tiny points of light to guide a person to the comfy couch and a book, a perfect start or end to a day.

In the morning, putting books aside, I sat. In one hand a letter from my niece asking me to tell her something of her grandmother who died before she really came to know her. In the other hand I held an agate. As I did so, I noticed that at the small frozen edge of a large pond that sits out behind the house, a King Fisher stood, looking for breakfast, finding only an icy hard table. His eyes could see in air and under water, but today his vista was barren. The pond completely frozen but for a small center, like an eye wide open to the insult of the cold. In its deep blue center, a small movement of stream, water ebbing and flowing, occasionally leaving the eyes center, out onto the ice like a tear. It waits and it waits - seeing only upward, hoping for warmth and light before it's forced to close itself in resignation.

Winter was upon us, and too many years have passed for my niece since her grandma's death. I hope a lifetime will pass before that kind of loss may find it's way again into a home where her heart lies in. I think of what stories I should tell her. A cup of English tea shakes the cold off of the room and soothes the chill that lingers only in my neck, the rest of me warmed by words that form from thoughts of the past. Words that I hope offer her happy memory of times she didn't witness.

There is strength in memory, just as there is light. In one minute of memory there's my Mom's hands on the sun covered counter, making the chocolate chip cookies that I love to this day, hands steady and firm, belying the tremor inside of her. She would carefully measure out the flour and sugar and salt, then just flinging in more chips than called for, wild abandon of sweetness in life too often bland. In another, I see myself bathed in the light of the fire in the great room, waiting with her, as music from the stereo filled the air in a kitchen fragrant with love. Letting the deep richness engulf me with a taste, hot from the oven, washed down by a glass of milk, cold as ice, meeting the warmth and expanding us both.

In spring, after the winter cold and snow retreated, we would head outdoors, just the two of us, along the shores of local bodies of water looking for stones, stones that may have not been unearthed for years, abundant embedded in earth and sand. They're quiet treasures on the shores of the the West, wind swept lands riddled with unclaimed treasures that people simply pass and forget, not knowing what they have underneath their feet. Beneath this great land lies jeweled richness of stone, and prehistoric bones, telling tales as they surface, dotting the future with pieces of the past.

Some stones are so tiny as to be little bearings of smoothness, the size of a small birds egg. Others take both hands to hold. My Mom as well, was fascinated by stones, and we'd search through the grey and dark and cold surfaces looking for the one that will break open into glorious color of gemstone. Rich colors forged in heat and fire and fate. We'd hunt down an agate, and knowing what we will find inside of it, we'd smile.

In native Indian culture agates were believed to cure the stings of scorpions and the bites of snakes, soothe the mind, prevent contagion, still thunder and lightning, promote eloquence, secure the favor of the powerful, and bring victory over enemies. In this agate, Mom might not find a cure for the stinging bite of what she has within her that was too soon to take her life, but in it she found strength and beauty, swirling colors of joy in that moment, something to sooth the thunder that rolled through her in dark frightened moments. She hand picked them, and cataloged them with us by type and color and origin. I happily worked with her, capturing the deep energy of the earth. Harnessing the forces that kept her alive.

Outside the frosted window this winter morning, a hawk, stalking the small King Fisher, came to find sustenance, cunning and vigilant, feathered fate waiting and watching. Always wanting something more. He sits, quiet, like stone, unmoving and waiting for what he desires. Determined in his longing for life, no different than any of us.

So, with remembrance of those times, I would try write my niece of what I remember of the strong women in our family. The writing paper is held under a weight of dense agate, the colors of blue and white and silver, as surreal as the sky under which the hawk flies, as blue green and clear as my Mother's eyes. My niece did not get the chance to truly know her, and only maintains that bond through photos held and scattered around the shores of our family's homes, waiting to be picked up and found.

But I remember. All I can think of is my Dad, after she was gone, moving across their bedroom floor in bare, cold feet, the room now nearly empty, but thunderous with her presence. Her clothes still in her closet, the remnants of her existence in colorful pieces of cloth, in her favorite colors of agates, blues, and obsidian and ivory and golds, discovered like gemstone when the closet was broken open. And the look on his face as he found them. Not a look of grief, or incomprehension, but a look of fierce affirmation that she had been here. Of recognition of the subtle, complex beauty that was found deep within her strength. Of the jeweled richness she had left the next generations of women who love stones.

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The hawk took to the sky with a keen of loss, joining the radiant aggregate of blue, the prey he desired long gone. I had tried to write the words. And I couldn't, words frozen in my throat, a tear trickling out of my eye, splashing on stone, as azure swirls of cold clear blue let loose the waters of memory.