In My Hands

The night after it happened, I dreamt of sea glass, of wave-tossed pieces the size of salad plates. Indigo, aqua, emerald, and countless shards both the color of earth and clouds lay scattered before me, so easy to find, on this beach that was part Cape Cod, part Alaska, with sand dunes and rocky coves.

My steps led to a rock wall higher than I could see made of shale and black sand and more sea-tumbled glass.

I pulled weathered pieces, softened by waves, out of the wall, each one bigger than the one before, till I pulled a perfectly formed glass bowl, etched with old wooden sail ships, out of that rock wall, and cupped it in my two lined hands.

The night after my son, in a moment of rage, swung his open hand at the side of my head, while I looked away from him to check on my daughter.

I dreamt of sea glass.

The night after my thirteen year old son smacked me in the side of my head, a mere six days after I suffered a mild concussion.

A concussion I gave myself when I squatted down to pick up a bag of frozen turkey that fell to the floor and stood up into the corner of the freezer door, right on that soft once-open-to-the-world-part of the top of my skull.

"You hit me in the fuckin' head!" I said, unable to check my language at the kids-in the-house-door.

My rattled mind unable to respond with humor or grace before the strike. To what began as a sibling dispute. A dispute hat might have been quelled with words dlivered just right.

Instead, I grabbed Elias from behind, triggering the bear that lives in his injured brain, the one that always chooses fight. I even dared to look away, as the bruin crawled from the den where he's slept since August, unaware he was waking, until he met the side of my head with his beefy paw. My boy who walks with his arms, with shoulders broader than mine. 

"You hit me in the fuckin' head!"

The night after it happened, I dreamt of sea glass.

I dreamt of collecting pieces along a familiar beach, that led me to an unexpected wall, inside of which I found a perfectly shaped glass bowl, with old wooden sail ships carved in a circle, unscathed by the waves.

The day before it happened, it stopped raining.

I took a slow stroll on the beach in town, my mind still cloudy, I focused on my foot steps. I scanned the ground for heart rocks and glass tumbled by the sea.

"What are you finding down there?" a woman asked through her car window from the campground above me.

"Sea glass," I replied. The younger woman in the passenger seat pumped her fist in the air.

The two women joined me by the tide line. "How do you find sea glass?" the younger woman asked, as she pushed her foot around on the rocky beach. "Do you have to move the rocks aside?"

"No, you just need to scan the beach for something a little shiny, like here," I said, pointing to a small piece of cloudy-but-once-clear glass.

"Wow, you're good."

"No, not really,  once you find one, your eyes will start to see more. I've been searching for an hour already."

(An hour plus forty years, give or take a month.)

"Heres one!" she exclaimed, she showed the clear-ish piece to me and then waved it in the air to catch her companion's attention.

How do you find sea glass? Do you have to move the rocks aside?

Yes, yes, you do.

You have to scale mountains sometimes to find a tiny sliver of hope. Crawl up a granite cliff with your fingernails to discover a speckle of light. Grunt against the boulders, as you roll them up hill, only for the behemoth rocks to roll back down, and for you to start again, and again, only then might you notice a tiny gift from the sea.

Sea glass has been called mermaid's tears.

The night after it happened, I dreamt of sea glass the size of salad plates and one whole untarnished bowl that I cupped between my two lined hands.

The day after, I woke feeling hungover, without the benefits of an evening of drinks, not even one, but I woke without a grudge, without my normal armadillo armor after an evening of responding to Elias's animal self.

The kids and I spent the morning at the campground beach in town. Olive and I playfully jostling for pieces of found glass, our competitive spirits at work in nature's playground.

"Is this sea glass?' Elias, my legally blind son, would say, pointing at a white rock or muscle shell.

"No, Bud."

Undaunted, he'd ask again, when he wasn't distracted by ripping apart pieces of bull kelp and other seaweeds that his sister found for him.

Before long, Elias's humor over-rode his desire to find beach treasures, and he started picking up rocks the size of salad plates and saying with a grin: "I found another piece of sea glass."

Or stepping on a rock even he, with his strong shoulders, hands, and arms,  couldn't lift, and saying: "Look Mom, look at this giant piece of sea glass!"

He made us laugh-- and as the rain fell, I cupped Elias's head between my two lined hands and kissed him right above his ocean blue sail-away eyes.

Comments

[Alexandra Heidinger]

Beautiful.