Yesterday I took the boys to a Rock And Gem Show in nearby Port Moody. They went bananas for all the pretty rocks and gems. Eli scored a teeeny tiny emerald and Arlo convinced me to lend him enough money to buy a very hardcore necklace with a sword and skull pendant.
“What kind of gem is this?” he asked the woman whose booth it was.
“Oh that’s just glass, honey,” she said, “but the sword is real pewter.”
We came home with cloth “grab bags” full of polished and unpolished stones for two dollars each and the joy of the grab bag came back to me with a whoomp, like a strong gust of wind. I used to buy grab bags for two dollars at Shopper’s Drug Mart when I was a kid. They were paper bags with random cosmetics in them and it was so exciting to pull the staples out of the top of the bag, unfold it, and see the surprise.
This morning, Arlo informed me he wanted to go to the beach with a hammer and safety glasses so he could look for gold. What could I say — the sun was shining and it was a warm day. We grabbed our hammer and an old pair of sunglasses of mine and drove across the bridge to the beach at Port Royal in Queensborough. I had never been there but had heard it was a Best Kept Secret of the City so a quick google found me all the information I needed.
The kids smashed rocks and splashed around in the Fraser River. A big dog — husky, malamute? — came down to the beach and dug himself a hole almost his own size. He smelled something good down there. Every time his minder tried to fill in the hole with sand, he gave her a dirty look and recommenced digging. His fat, white paws were a flurry.
He never did find what he was looking for. #sadbono
Clusters of ducks swam by, using the river current to their advantage, looking like they were swimming on fast forward.
A flock of geese flew overhead. It was blindingly sunny and warm. My sinuses felt clear. I felt rested, finally, after days of feeling tired.
Today I’m grateful for space and time. Time to make space: ridding our house of bags of old clothes, overdue library books, overflowing compost. Time to make food that is delicious and time to wash up after myself so there is more space on the kitchen counter and I don’t feel like I’m drowning in pots and pans. Time to make space on my bookshelf for five new library books, to dig out all the many blue spiral bound notebooks I’ve been collecting and take them upstairs so that when I look at the shelf, I only see the story revisions I’m working on right now. Space to find time to work. Time to stretch and put the spaces back between my vertebrae so I feel long and loose, not hunched and achy.
Time and space, sunshine and clear sinuses. I don’t ask for much.
Gem shows are so spectacular. We took the kids to an exhibit at our natural history museum so that we could all geek out over the many shiny rocks and the huge slab of meteorite. We didn’t get grab bags though, those are such fun!
You have a way of writing gratefulness that doesn’t end up sounding like a gratitude journal. Good on you, writing lady.
A rock & gem show! Oh my, I would have died to have gone to one of those as a kid. DIED. I was a rock hoarder from a very young age. It was almost my job when I was four. Sit on the dirt road behind our house and pick through the rocks for the good ones.
And I also remember those $2 grab bags from Shoppers – they’d sell them at their annual “sidewalk sale”. Random cosmetics, yes!
Grab bags are magic!
I loved polished rocks! They’re fascinating.