Mother – So Lynnish …

I came by it naturally … my obsession with rocks, shells , acorns, buttons from shirts, and so forth. My mother had the obsession is well. Everywhere we would go, she would pick up small rocks as a memento that we had been there – sort of like prehistoric Polaroids.

When I was just a little kid, we would be driving down a country road when Mom would suddenly holler for Dad to “Stop the car Cecil”, so we could all get out and haul a rather gigantic rock into the trunk. Sometimes it took all three of us to move the occasional boulder, but Dad was always so good natured about it. He loved Mom enough to let her bring home any rock she desired because she loved them so.

I don’t know how genetics work, but somehow, I too, am famously obsessed with them. All around the house stuff like seashells, rocks, acorns and old handkerchiefs have a special place. I even have a small box of buttons. But rocks … those have become my true hearts desire. Some are on display …. some are tucked away.

These days, when people go on vacation, they ask me what they can bring me back as a souvenir. My answer is always the same … “Just go find me a rock!”

Rocks are one of the things I truly enjoy the most in life! I love feeling of the rocks and sometimes I’ll actually smell them to see if they carry a bit of their homeland with them … like Pakistan or Germany! Both of those had a unique t scent. And while I won’t readily admit to it, a few people have accused me of sticking my tongue to a couple. But what I enjoy most about the “getting part” … is the story that’s always attached to it: how they got it, where they got it, sometimes there are photos .. but the “rocks story” is always lovely to hear.

My friend’s know me well and they tell me they actually enjoy going out and searching for the most perfect rock for me! One friend and his family searched the shoreline of Iceland for hours until they found one of the most interesting ones in my collection. All five of them were picking up rock after rock on the beach and his kids were arguing about who had found the best rock. It was getting late and suddenly there was a bright flash on the shoreline that got everyones attention. The Northern Lights were lighting up the evening sky! One small rock at at the waters edge caught the eye of his four year old grandson as it reflected the glow of the glistening Aurora Borealis! THAT was the rock they brought me back. Dan said his grandson held it in his hand all the back from Reykjavik!

I’ve been mailed rocks from some of the most beautiful places in the world! Friends send the rock and later post photos on their social page of the rock on the ground, a photo of them picking it up, and usually a photo of them with the rock standing in the beautiful scene! It’s become a “THING”! Friends online will pick a rock up from their yard and send it to me and do the same thing! Then there are those who include me in their incredible travel adventures and bring rocks back from places I dream of traveling …. like the Holy Land, the pyramids of Egypt, Stonehenge, the Vatican, the high mountains of Peru, the deep caves of Mexico, and the peaks of the tallest mountains in the world! (I have rocks from 8 of the top ten peaks … and yes, Everest is one of them!)

So do you understand why I love rocks yet?

I have a THEORY about my rocks. Each rock that is being picked up and given to me has more than likely stayed in that general spot for millions of years … but in my theory, it has a destiny. It, by destiny, is selected out of all the other rocks and picked up just for me. The fingers that touched it and handed off to me, may be the only figures in history to ever have touched it. Some of my rocks are from the other side of the Earth but yet they end up here with me and placed in a very loved collection with other rocks from all over the world. That part I know. The “destiny theory” … well, I’m still mulling that one over.

As for the acorns, I place them in soil and watch them grow. Oak trees from the Middle East and Russia grow side by side in my yard, yet no one would ever know at a glance. But I know … and the people who gave them to me know.

On my property in Waynesville, I’ve buried over two dozen oak acorns from all over the world. I can hardly wait till spring when they wake up and poke their tops up through the soil!

In my basement I have a lot of my mother’s things.

Among those things is a ream size paper box and four metal coffee cans filled with thousands of small adorable rocks. A friend of mine suggested I go to a specialty mill and have a large sheet of Plexiglas poured and put part of my collection in it, that way I could see it them from both sides. She said it would make an incredible looking room divider or shower doors and frames.

I’ve also thought about doing one of the many rock designs you see on Pinterest. For now though, I take comfort in the fact that I’m simply obsessed with them. Each one, MILLIONS and MILLIONS of years in the making …. and I and only a tiny part of its story.

Happiness!

In my basement there is a cardboard box filled to the brim with Blue Willow china. Place settings for ALMOST sixteen are wrapped in newspapers dated September 13, 1995 … almost two weeks to the day after Mom passed away.

Now before you stop reading, thinking “here comes a depressing piece, written by a down-in-the-dumps writer”, I need to tell you that this is anything BUT a depressing piece, and I am anything BUT down in the dumps.

This little tale begins around fifty years ago in 1966 when I was a mere six years old.

We, meaning my Mom, my Dad, and myself, were wrapping that Blue Willow china for our move from Macon to Savannah, Georgia. Dad was unpacking the china cabinet and handing the beautiful blue plates to me and mother, and we would wrap them in newspaper and stack them in a cardboard box. At the time, there were sixteen place settings along with assorted matching bowls, pitchers, and tea-sets. Mom was desperately proud of that Blue Willow set, because she had saved up Octagon Soap coupons and ordered the entire set through the mail.

I know this because every time we used that china, Mom would regale us in how she purchased that Octagon Soap for everyone she knew, just so she could earn enough coupons for the set. In other words, if you had a birthday coming up, more than likely you would get a bar of soap … well, a bar of soap along with a half of a pound cake or maybe a coconut cake.

Mom would tell this story with a lot of pride, and when she got to the part where she sent off the “bulging packet of Octagon Soap coupons“, she would ALWAYS be laughing at the idea that she bought soap every week for nearly two years, just to get that set of Blue Willow china. My Aunt Ruth would chime in, “The people at that grocery store must have thought you lived with the filthiest bunch of people!”

It was was her favorite “hard times” story to tell, and truthfully, I loved hearing it even though I didn’t have a CLUE what Octagon Soap was.

So anyway, there we were … wrapping her china, when Dad suggested that he and Mom have a cup of coffee. They vanished into the kitchen and I was left at the dining room table wrapping plates.

Don’t ask me how it happened … what strange event happened to cause the Earth to shift and yank the plate from my hand … I haven’t a clue.

But whatever it was that happened in that split second turned me from a cherub into an outlaw.

When I looked down and realized that the plate was broken almost perfectly in half, my heart plummeted like an elevator down to my toes. Since Mom and Dad were in the kitchen, I did what any normal six year old would do … I wrapped both pieces in a piece of newspaper, smuggled it down the hall to my bedroom and stuffed it between the mattress and the boxed springs.

Fast forward five more moves and it’s the late 70’s. I’m nineteen years old and Mom was unpacking her Blue Willow dishes and the one she had JUST unwrapped magically fell perfectly into two pieces in her hand. She looked at the plate as if she were wondering what strange event had caused the earth to shift and break one of her plates perfectly in half.

It was then that I spilled my guts, and since it was years and years later (and Mom hadn’t even missed the stupid plate), we both shared a good laugh until we had tears streaming down our cheeks.

So where, you might ask, had the Blue Willow plate been all that time?

Well, after unsuccessfully gluing it back together with school paste, I decided to bury the thing in the back yard once we were moved into our new house in Savannah. However, the ground was so hard, I could barely dig a hole big enough to bury a pecan, much less two broken halves of a Blue Willow plate. So, I hid it in the garage in a box of my toys I no longer played with.

During the NEXT move (when talk of a yard sale put the fear of God in me), I decided to try once again to hide the evidence by burying it in the only soft spot in our back yard. Almost a dozen months later a torrential rainstorm washed the dirt from around the buried plate (I was the only kid alive who routinely watched rain in a terrified horror), so I had to bring it back in and hide it once again. It stayed hidden in my Barbie Doll case until 1976.

I was sixteen and a glorious invention called Super Glue saved my life.

Late one night I covertly glued the plate back together and let it dry in the back of my closet. Several days later, at long last, it was slipped back into the china cabinet when no one was looking.

For thirteen long years that stupid broken plate had followed me around. It had been buried, hidden, smuggled, glued, and stuffed into a Barbie doll case. It had made my life a living nightmare at every dinner Mom decided to use the “good china”. I held my breath during every move, and once when the box of china slipped out of Dads hands and hit the corner of the table, I PRAYED for a few broken pieces! I surmised that maybe I could somehow slip that stupid broken plate into the box before anyone “outed” the missing one. No such luck. Everything survived.

I was bound for hell.

So, today the box of Blue Willow china is in the basement. On the very top of the stack of plates is a wrapped plate that is very clearly broken exactly in half. On the back, there is a tell-tale line of dirt mixed with school glue from one of my many attempts at repairing the plate … a plate that no longer “haunts” me, but rather comes along for the ride as I tell MY kids the story of that plate …

… that stupid blue willow plate that Mom got with Octagon Soap coupons.

Tag: Mother

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