Serenity… refocus – seek joy – thrive

I was updating my “Why this is all about me” page this morning, and at one point I needed something to compare creatively working through the junk to get to the good stuff to. Of course the usual came to mind – gemstones, a diamond in particular – but I don’t much like gemstones, and I have always disliked diamonds, even though they are my birthstone.

Besides, too, too cliché, no? Digging to find the jewels. No, I needed something a bit more personal, some item that held meaning beyond what could be seen or sold. And out of nowhere (okay, well out of my way-back memory) came sparkly rocks! The perfect comparison I needed! Well, perfect except that no one else knows why sparkly rocks are so wise and important – so I thought I’d better go ahead and tell the story of me and my sparkly rocks.

Short story first,  I was surrounded by time, security, beauty, and silence (there is little I wouldn’t give for any or all of those now!) – and I was crabby, frazzled, having a bad, ungrateful, ungracious day, until…

It was about 15 years ago now, I guess. My younger self was full of energy; I had a good job that I hated, a nice 4-bedroom rented house, plenty of money (for our needs), limited family drama – and dreams and ideas and the wanting of something different and more were clawing up my insides, daily.

This particular day was a Central California Stunner. A bottle-blue sky washed in the light of a rare benevolent sun; the warmth of its rays slide gently along your skin as if preparing to gather you close into an embrace. A brief respite from its normal fire-spitting fury when, after one step into its heat, fears of your flesh shriveling up like one of our area’s famous raisins trot through your mind.

I was inside, though, in a quiet house I had all to myself for a few hours. My desk was situated, perhaps somewhat unwisely, at a point where I could look through the sliding glass door into a backyard of laden fruit trees. With a turn of my head I could look out a side window in the kitchen, right into the flower garden next door. What I lacked in the green-thumb department my neighbor more than made up for, for her garden was a joyful explosion of color and scents. (Unfortunately, her personality did not match this joy, but that’s okay; I just wanted to look at her public offerings, not drop in for tea.)

And there I sat in front of my computer, broody and discontent, frustrated because whatever I was working on – no doubt one of my many plans to save the world – just would not gel. I felt like growling at someone but there was no one around to growl at except Cat and, well, if you are a cat-knower then I don’t have to explain what a pointless growl that would be. I needed to do something;  I thought of knocking on my neighbor’s door just so her pained “Oh my God, there’s a Black person living next door to me!” smile-frown would give me a reason to sneer at her or something.

Then the doorbell rang. And, finally, my excuse. I hate doorbells! I am somewhat anti-social, don’t like unexpected visitors and I get annoyed when people ring my doorbell. I stalked to the door determined to break every rule of my upbringing – I was not, really not, going to smile at whoever was on the doorstep and say, with a fluting lilt, “Hellooo! How nice to see you!” or “May I help you?” if it’s a stranger. I was going to be rude and snap at someone. Finally!

I snatched opened the heavy wood door, only to find that some eight year old kid had walked right out of a Norman Rockwell painting and landed on my doorstep, rolled up jeans and plaid shirt and all. We stared at each other silently for a moment. The little white kids around here were more inclined to peek curiously at me than to come right up to my door.

Now, believe me when I tell you that I could have resisted his tousled red-gold curls (even if I am a sucker for redheads); the freckles spattering his face, making his clear green eyes seem greener? no problem, a dime a dozen; even the wide, fearless “I am your friend, are you my friend, too?” smile could (really!) have left me cold. But then I glanced down at the box he held in his hands, at the contents and then at the hand lettered sign taped crookedly to the front – “Sparkly rocks for sale! 25 cents each” – and my traitorous defenses just fell.

“Hi, sweetie,”  I fluted. “May I help you?”

He held the tattered box up a bit higher. “Do you want to buy a sparkly rock?”

Jeeze, even his voice, that slightly husky, Spanky and our Gang boy-voice, was conspiring against me.

“Um…” I made sure to gaze intently only at his sparkly rocks, and not at the dozens decorating areas of my backyard, and side and front yards.  White sparkly rocks seemed to be the ground-cover of choice in this neighborhood and I was pretty sure a backyard was where he got those.

I loved it! Talk about chutzpah, this kid was filled to the brim with it.

“I’ll take two. Hold on just a moment,” as I rushed to grab a couple of quarters, because obviously if this kid (who I had never seen before, and never saw again) was selling readily available rocks, there had to be something special about these particular ones.

“You can pick out whichever ones you want,” he offered generously, after I handed over the coins. I poked through the box until I found two that felt just right. They nestled warmly in the palm of each hand, were white with  black striations through them and sparkled all over when held up in the sunlight. Surely magical rocks, these.

The boy gave me one last brilliant, snaggle-toothed smile before heading down the street, presumably to ring the doorbell of the next house.

Me, I took my rocks and settled them on the counter where the light streaming through the windows set the sparkles dancing, then sat back down, laughing, to work.

I don’t know where my rocks are now; too many moves since then. The magic of them, though, continues. I only have to think of them or of that audacious little boy, with his offerings of dreams and boldness, bright in the sunlight on my doorstep, to remind me to laugh, to dream big, and to smile when I knock on scary doors.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 15th, 2010 at 1:21 pm and is filed under in with the woo, life, mostly remembered memories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.