This old rock

There is this old rock that's been kicking around my various houses for years. Rainbow painted on one side, fading colors being worn into the rock. It almost looks as if the rock bled the colors in an attempt to stand out and be taken home by some amazed child. Even the knowing that my daughters hands laid them in place with the wide strokes of a brush one summer day, baked there by the sun, I can still imagine it wanted it this way...


Plain rock among the many just like it, worn away by the years of sun and wind on a more often than not cold Pacific Northwest beach. Year after year the hordes of walkers and children coming to squeal as they find bits and pieces that the ocean has tossed up to be take as it hits their fancy. The pretty baubles of shells and flotsam getting grabbed up in tight hands, tossed into buckets or even slid into the warmth of pockets in a rain proof coat. What else could a plain old rock do to become... noticed? So slowly, ever so slowly, the colors creep out along it's surface like a pastel bleed. Faded and worn and growing just that little bit brighter with each passing year until that one child comes along. The soft hands that encompass it and lift it free of it's ages old home to clutch it tightly. Treasure found! Can you just feel the excitement and noise of being loaded into a bus and careening around the curves of a steep grade at 10 miles an hour as the sing song of children's voices surround it? Oh that moment, the brush slowly and carefully showing the rest of the world it's striking face that she found. A rainbow, applied so that no color touches the others, straight lines that wriggle at the edges like she did in the chair as she worked.


This story in rock form kicks around my place now, laying in wait at the oddest moments to stub a toe, placed on papers to hold them down with a firm grip or having the thrill of dropped plenty of times just to see how much it would thump, the cry rings out after, "It was an accident, I swear!". Even when you just knew...it wasn't. The child has grown now, rarely does she kick or toss or drop this rock. Yet she is still fiercely protective of it, this is *her* rock. New hands grab for it now and she does allow him these magic moments of being "allowed" to touch her rock or carry it to where she wants him to place it. For years to come I think this rock will remind me forcefully in the middle of the night, as my toe finds it very solid in the liquid softness of night, of that small girl child racing along beaches until she had to stop. For this rock.