Rethinking a Box of Rocks
Patrick is hand-turning a wooden rattle.
No, we’re not expecting (if that were the case, I wouldn’t have a baby shower. I’d hold a press conference). It’s for ceremony and prayer, and he’s been artistically thoughtful about it.
Two weeks ago, he was describing the rattle’s design and asked if he could look through our late neighbor Joe Berg’s rock collection, some of which we’d purchased at Joe’s estate auction several years ago. Patrick was hoping to find a few smaller stones to seal inside the rattle’s seedpod-like shape. Before I continue, yes, I paid money for rocks that weren’t going to resurface our long driveway or dangle all polished and shiny at the end of a silver chain around my neck. But the ones we bought weren’t just any rocks up for bid. Joe and his wife Bea traveled extensively in the early years of their marriage, across the U.S. and abroad, collecting rocks from each place they visited, labeling and cataloging them meticulously for future generations. The sheer story value alone got my attention as I wandered through rows of folding tables set up on the east lawn of their 100+ year-old farmstead, past avocado and harvest gold-colored countertop kitchen appliances, dusty silk flower arrangements and carefully placed Tiffin stemware, some with the original silver sticker still clinging to the base (I came home with some of that too, some creatively acquired road signs and a vintage accordion, but that’s another story…).
The rock collection had been distributed among several shallow cardboard trays that covered at least seven of the two dozen or so 6-foot tables near the farmhouse’s back door. The auctioneer grouped and offered the trays for “choice” (the highest bidder gets to select which and how many box lots they want) or “one money” (all the trays sold to the highest bidder), the crowd inching along with him as each tray was won, and I kept pace with them, knowing exactly which ones I was hoping to bring home. Some of the rocks were massive and needed no box at all for display purposes, their random glints of crystal and quartz winking at us in the summer afternoon sunlight. Like magpies with money, we ping-ponged our bids off one another until the going price sifted some of us out of the running. The large rocks from mostly western states (Arizona, Utah, Colorado) sold first and fast, their new owners cradling them carefully back to their cars and trucks each time the auctioneer hollered “SOLD!” Eight trays remained, their contents small and sorted into square 70’s-era food storage containers without lids. Rose quartz, fool’s gold, bits of real gold in tiny tube-glass lidded containers, obsidian and geodes and flint (polished and unpolished) sat waiting their turn. I’d evaluated all the trays’ contents carefully before the auction began and now stood ready, my cardstock number in hand while the auctioneer offered these last eight trays as “choice” (best auction advice I can give is show up early and examine everything, even the stuff you don’t want to buy. You just never know).
I came home with the six trays I wanted and spent the rest of the afternoon turning over the past, touching pieces of places I’ve never been and imagining the feet of ancestors pressing against the rough surface of time, now scattered in bits on our kitchen table. On this side of things, I will not know what caught Joe’s eye when he glanced down and saw a nondescript gray shard of something that turned out to be petrified wood. It is enough that he paused, held it in his hand and shared it with his children for decades.
I’ve moved these rocks more than once in the past five years, from the bottom of a dresser drawer to the upstairs guestroom and once again this morning, to rest atop the vintage blanket chest that serves as our coffee table in the living room. Where some of them go from there is up to Patrick and the rattle that will eventually enclose them for another who knows how many years. It’s his story to tell, not mine. But for an hour or so after breakfast on a summer Sunday morning, our imaginations meandered across the miles, passing through the ghostly whispers of lives and stories now mingling with our own.
Let the ceremony begin.
And continue.
