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.

Here’s what happened:

Like I said, I needed milk and this store, being right across the street, was indeed convenient. Only, when I looked over there I saw that there were a bunch of people jammed into one of the doorways of this very small store, with more trying to get in. I knew just from that that Malik was on duty because when the owners are there no one just hangs out. Malik was well-known in the neighborhood, a youth football coach who was viewed by the kids as part father confessor, part big brother, part wise old man and all around good guy.

Anyway, this crowd – this was weird even for Malik days; usually kids hang out outside or pick up a broom and sweep the parking lot or make sure the gas nozzles are on straight, or whatever. Never had I seen them all trying to cram into the tiny store doorway at once, everyone looking in the same direction, plus these weren’t all teens – obviously something had happened and I hoped it wasn’t something bad.

Perhaps strangely, the crowd didn’t deter me or the guy who had just pulled up to the pumps in the late model Mercedes. Me, I didn’t feel like walking to the big store and he, well there were no other gas stations nearby and he was obviously in a big hurry.  Anyway, the people in the doorway somehow made room for us get through and as soon as I crossed the threshold I heard that noise people make in threes in the back of their throats; “Mmph, mmph, mmph,” then “Man, that’s a blessing.” So, Malik was okay, that was his voice – but why was everyone staring his way? And what was the good news? I snaked around shoulders and arms, listening to the echo as it moved from person to person -  “.. a blessing”, “Yeah, that’s a blessing.” Maybe someone won the lottery.

Just as I reached the back of the store and grabbed the milk someone said “26!” and the process started over again – Malik’s voice saying that’s a blessing and the echoes throughout the men in the store. I had what I came for but I was really curious now about what was going on, so I sidled on over to the car product section, because that is where I had the best view of the front door and the register, and pretended I was really interested in STP and stuff. From there I got my first real look at the crowd – had to be about 25 people, all but two younger than 40, most looked like they were in their 20s, all Black, all male, all looking toward Malik.

Some of the guys I recognized – like Old Pete who walks around with a shopping cart collecting cans and plastic and old bike parts to fix up bikes for neighborhood kids. And the kid with his sideways baseball cap, big shirt, big shorts and one sock falling down. He stomps around with a frown on his face, holding his crotch, and every time I see him I have to laugh (to myself) because he reminds me of some sort of Spanky and Our Gang character or something who has to go to the bathroom. I do not tell him this because I think he thinks he looks “tough.”

No scowl on the kid this day, though; in fact, he looks young and anxious and innocent as he stares at up at Malik – who looms over everyone because the shorter store owners have a raised floor behind the register to make them look bigger. Malik is already so big that, with his football-player build, shiny bald head and earring, even on level ground he looks like someone just coaxed out of a lamp. 

Another sends a number into the mix and gets the throat sounds and the blessing and then suddenly the kid pipes up – “16!” he says, looking if possible even more worried. Everyone turns to him, Malik looks at him – then shakes his head three times in lieu of the sound and says, “Man… that’s a blessing”. The kid’s face is luminous and gratified – his offering was accepted. There is also an illumination in my mind as I get an idea of what all this is about.  They are calling out ages. Their ages. I realized I was witnessing …what? A rite? An affirmation? A bonding? I had no idea what to call it, but it was something special so I ignored my warming milk and stayed right where I was as the ages and blessings moved through the gathering.

Finally Old Pete says “64!” and a murmur arises even before Malik strongly declares that that’s a blessing and the crowd echoes it. Another surprising offering comes – “65!” and things stop for a minute as everyone looks. I see it’s Mercedes Man, the guy who had been in such a hurry. He was still there, right next to Old Pete – it seems he, too, got caught up in the impromptu pageantry of whatever was going on, and put off whatever he had been rushing toward. All attention was focused on the two older men, Mercedes Man and Old Pete – and they looked at each other, eyes weighing and cataloging.

One in a $1000 suit, his whole being so soft and shiny and expensive he looked like he’d been run over with a floor buffer; the other in old overalls and scruffy tennis shoes, his whole being so scarred and pitted by life he just looked like he’d been run over, period. I saw the expressions flicker across everyone’s faces as they sincerely but distractedly offered their blessings – only a year separated these two in age, but life had separated them in far more than that.

After a moment things started rolling again.

I had to leave so I walked to the front, put my milk on the counter and, as a sort of sideways acknowledgement of what I had just witnessed, said “42!” I understood the kid’s anxiety now – would my offering be accepted, I wondered? Black women may die of different things, but we too tend to die early. I got my answer as Malik smiled and shook his head three times and declared my age a blessing, and as the men added theirs Malik presented an offering of his own. “I’m 32.” Then, maybe thinking he should explain the all male grouping (I was still the only female in the store, and there were still only Black people in there – both odd things) Malik started talking about how Black men, Black boys – they sometimes don’t live that long. Any age a Black man attained was a blessing; an older age, like he was, sometimes a miracle. He has a little girl, he says, five years old and the center of his life. He wants to grow old for her so he stays out of messes and away from trouble – but sometimes even that doesn’t work if you’re the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Everyone listens and nods, looking somber and determined, hopeful and a bit hopeless as some offer their stories, too, of themselves or someone they know who is gone – to disease, to prison, or, far too often, to the grave. Not all sadness or despair, of course, or even primarily – plenty of triumphs and just day-to-day eventless lives. Kids off to college, better jobs, forming families and so on. All the more shocking when often senseless tragedy strikes someone-who-could-be-me, though.

I knew all this, of course, what Black U.S. American doesn’t? But after looking at and listening to this group of men and boys who were everything – rich, poor and in-between; fat, thin, baby thugs, fathers, sons, blue collar, white collar, never had a collar in their lives, high yellow, golden brown, black as coal, very young, old young, very old – after looking and listening and accidently witnessing this… whatever it was, after this I knew all this in a very different way, to the marrow of my bones.

And I walked out of the store changed, if just a little. Even now, years later,  I sometimes pass groups of young or old Black men, or Latino, or other target groups and think – that’s a blessing.

And when I look at my three beautiful Black grandsons I see them in my mind’s eye as old men, and hope the blessings hold.

[The title of this piece is from Dwayne Betts’ wonderful, thought-provoking essay, The Tragedy of Biggie and Pac / photo of group of young men is from here]

No, it’s more the question I’ve been asking myself lately as I sit here looking at the blank screen day after day, realizing I feel I have nothing of worth to write about. “They” say to write what you know – and I wonder, yeah… but what is that? What do I know? Except that’s not really what is being asked, though, is it.

Everyone who has lived, loved, worked, thought knows something. Very few get through life completely untouched by some sort of knowledge – no matter how debatable that fact seems when you come across certain people.

What I am really asking myself is “How much are you willing/have been willing to share of what you know?” And the answer to that, if I am being honest, is often “very little”. There are people who I’ve known for years – friends! -  who know virtually nothing about me beyond what is in the present because other than cute little reminisces of this and that, I don’t talk about myself (even though it seems like that’s all I do, sometimes).

And why is that, I wonder? Is it that I fear being cast out of some community of people who’ve lived “normal” lives with storybook childhoods? I don’t think so. I’ve lived long enough, and listened and read enough to know that storybook’s are often incomplete. And my life, my world, compared to some has been downright boring. So, it’s not that.

I think it’s habit. Mental illness is much more understood these days, but as a child with a mentally ill mother I learned early not to talk about myself, to keep my own counsel, to protect and deflect, to seemingly answer questions and then immediately turn the focus back on the questioner. This is not hard to do, as most people love to talk about themselves, to be understood, and I love listening to other’s stories (most times). This trait would make me a pretty good chronicler of someone else’s life, but it makes for being a crappy witness to my own past.

So, what to do. My mother said something the other day – just one word, which I don’t think she realized she said and which I plan to write about later, that made me realize how much of my reticence is about appearances, about race, expectations and just plain old habit. And how important it is, for me as a growing writer, to get out the crowbar and start prying open the vaults – filled with little enough though they may be.

And yes, I know I’ve said before, in one way or another, that I was going to do this, to open up, but I think I had to get to a place of understanding, first, why everything was closed in the first place.

Now that I’m starting to do that, to understand the why’s of silence, I think I’m about ready to begin to tell tales.

[image at top is my mother, me and one of my brothers. Where my other brother was during this photo is a whole ‘nother story to tell.]