Grace came home with these the other day; she calls them heart rocks.
Like me, she keeps her head down sometimes, looking for rocks. What, exactly, are we looking for in a rock? There are millions on the beach. Still, a few seem to call out to us: “Pick me, pick me!” We pick them. I look for color, and she, shape.
I live on a street named for the Massachusetts official rock, Roxbury puddingstone.
I grew up in a house across the street from a lot made unbuildable by the presence of a huge, rocky boulder. We called it The Big Rock. It was better than a playground. There were crevices in the rock to hide in, or pretend they were escalators. In neighborhood wars, one party or another claimed the rock. Daring kids, like Sally and Michael, did bike tricks around the rock and tree roots.
Surrounding our neighborhood, which was a figure-eight shaped development built in the early 1960s, was what we called The Woods. In it were acres of trees, streams, and swampy areas that made skating surfaces in the winter. There was The Old Lady who lived in a shack (really); she had a gun. There were stone walls that had tumbled down.
Sermons in Stone is one of my favorite nonfiction books. About the history of stone walls in New England, it’s riveting — history that moves a reader like a poem. I learned why there were so many stone walls in the woods of my childhood (those woods were once farmlands). I learned, too, the measure that makes a city block, and about the Ice Age and the force of glaciers.
In a writer’s workshop, another writer who read my work for the first time pointed out to me that there are a lot of stones in my work, actual and metaphorical. It was not a deliberate effect, and I had not noticed it. It’s funny what happens when someone observes something in your work: You start thinking, “That’s my thing.” And then you write more of it. And then you try not to, so as not to be obvious. And then you give up and go back to it, perhaps with more thoughtfulness.
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Photograph by Eli, who has new work here. Friendship bracelet by Lydia.
leaf stitch word 
Grace’s rocks resemble “The Missing Piece” illustration by Shel Silverstein. Our Big Rock also had a slice missing where you played escalator, but Brian and I pretended that it was stairs to our rock island. We assumed that the aligator (a wedge of rock no less) had at one time fit perfectly into the crevice.
Thank you for the diversion. I always tell my daughters how daring I was, so I am glad that someone else thinks so. My one and only intense childhood injury happened when I tour the ligaments in my left arm from doing an Evil Kneival (sp?) bike jump off of The Big Rock. Good memories.
Did I really type “tour” instead of “tore?” I must be thinking of Pete Townsend. Is he going on tour soon?
I always tell my kids how daring their Aunt Sally was. It’s still in you, just in a different form.
Thank you for the shout out. I don’t hate you anymore for posting the sound clip from Cambridgeside Galleria.