As
I place a thin chain about my neck, fingering the smooth cool
rock pendant now hanging some eight inches below my chin, I think
of my younger daughter, in the second or third year of her life,
sitting on my lap sucking the irregularly shaped fragment and
wondering how snow flakes could have been captured in its
midnight blue core. What a gift her snippet of memory gave me
when she recently recalled these times to me. To be certain that
a child truly remembers the warm affection which surrounded her
at that moment . . . I am deeply touched. All three of my
children remember different moments, as we recall together
several of the polished slices of agate, jade, flint, or
bloodstone which I then chose to wear instead of multiple strings
of beads which could so easily break when grabbed by grubby
little fists.For me, the rocky pendant also sparked related memories of hot dry days and family outings when, armed with hammers, we searched dry river banks in Central India for those misleadingly common lumps of dull rough rock which when cracked open reveal tiny magical caverns of crystalized amethyst, lavender, gold, pink and white. There were other treasures as well: dark green bloodstone splashed with coral or darker crimson, flint nodules sharply splintered, gem-streaked fragments freshly split, revealing surprising inclusions hidden for eons in the sandy, stony rocks carried from one place to another during India’s Monsoon floods, when the river beds and fallow fields receive annual soaking fertilization. The sharp blows of hammers, the cries of wonder, the rush of little legs over the gravel as the young explorers hurry to show off their enchanting discoveries. We needed no Disney World to find magic during the holidays with our family, and usually another family or two, in the India of thirty years ago.
Now the children are grown, and their special rocky treasures stand on shelf-edges, or in baskets, or glass jars filled with water to brighten their colors. Learning to look at rocks, their own little ones often fill their pockets with smooth pebbles, or keep them in special little boxes. But they can catch a tiny glimpse of their parents/Rocky Adventures in India only when they break open a purchased "geode" hidden in the toes of their stockings at Christmas. With one blow they shatter the mystery, and ask for a family visit to Asheville Gem Museum, or a stopover at one of the several tourist-inspired gem mines which dot the edges of the road they travel from Durham/Chapel Hill on a visit to grandma at Brooks-Howell Home.