If rocks were currency, I’d be rich.
I find rocks under the couch. In pockets of shorts. On the floor of the mini-van. Often I’m handed rocks to hold on to, and they end up in my purse.
My little boys are obsessed with rocks. It seems rock collecting is a universal practice among boys as other moms report the same thing.
Most of the time the rocks my boys pick up are just rocks; small, grey blobs. Sometimes the rocks are interesting. They shine with flecks of quartz, are etched with the markings of a fossil or they’re a much sought after chalk rock that can draw pictures on the driveway.
My six year old has a shelf full of rocks in his room. I don’t know how the shelf still hangs on the wall under the weight of the rocks. I’m just waiting for it to come crashing down on his little brother’s head. Whenever anything comes crashing down in our house, it always crashes into Wade.
Both plain and fancy rocks hold places of honor on David’s shelf. To David all the rocks are valuable, and he remembers exactly where he found each one. These rocks are his discoveries, and that makes them precious treasure.
I understand this, because I also collect. Memories. Memories that are mine, each one a treasure. Some are simple. Catching a toad in the yard. Rocking a sweet newborn in the night. Holding a toddler’s hand as we climb over a fallen log in the woods.
Some memories are more grand. Wading together in the Atlantic. Standing together atop of the Sears Tower and looking out over Chicago.
Some memories are dramatic. Comforting him as doctors work over him at the hospital as he labors for breath.
No matter how the memories are classified, like David’s rocks, they’re all precious to me.
Neither rocks nor memories are currency, but I am rich. Rich in love and joy.
Yes. This. My children are the exact same way. It’s more my daughter than my son these days. But my son did take video of the ants scurrying around my backyard, so, yes. I totally understand.
Just about an hour after reading this post, I found one of his rocks
that had fallen behind the computer desk. It does have a distinctive
marking.
I think it all started with Simon.
This brought tears to my eyes. David and I have been collecting rocks since the first time he could walk and we walked to Parkside to play on the playground. I don’t think he has ever come to my house that he and I didn’t pick up rocks. Now Wade picks up rocks when he is with grandma, too. When I was a little girl my best friend,Katy, and I would go to her aunt’s house and pick up rocks. Her aunt lived halfway between Katy’s house and mine. Her aunt had one of those hill like slopes as the entrance to her barn.. The sides were made out of rocks. We would pick up any loose rocks. Hey! for two little farm girls in the 1950’s that was exciting. I still had the rock for a few years after I was married. One time when we were moving to a new parsonage your dad found the rock. He gave it away to Don Rices’s little boy who was helping us move that day. I still miss my rock, not because it was valuable, but because of my childhood memories. Maybe Wade and David will have memories of grandma and the rocks when they are grown up.