Sea Glass Synchronicty?

Sea Glass Synchronicty?

 I’ve described my falling in love with sea glass and hunting as a spiritual explosion, a practice and something which has been teaching me. Well, now I’m reaching the less than blissful lessons. I’m not even going to get into the most difficult aspects. I’ve been called to teach. Over and over and over. When I stand in front of groups I worry that I will drool, that my lips quiver so much no one will understand what I say or that my face will get so red and blotchy people will call a paramedic.

 

I’ve led a department of ten. I’ve given talks at churches. I’ve rallied and protested and written and shared my opinions. But talking to a small group, eye to eye, and trying to explain how to do a task. Trusting that I will be clear when I will speak, that nerves won’t cause me to chatter rather than allow silence or that I will even be able to get out of my way to hear a question asked. These are my issues. Still, seven year-olds I adore say, “Can you show me how to make a necklace,” strangers ask if I can lead a brownie group through a session and despite how badly I think I’ve done as an artist-in-residence I may have a chance to teach pendant wrapping again. And there’s public classes too.

 

I keep telling myself I need work and money and love sea glass. I also LOVE sharing making jewelry with others because people feel such pride in finding their own sea glass and in wrapping them and making a craft. So, is this all part of the lesson too? Maybe I am supposed to be pushed outside of my comfort zone and am supposed to teach as much as I am to sell and to create? Listen to this.

 

At the end of a family fun day at the Y we belong to a woman comes up to me and said, “That’s sea glass.” She had on tumbled sea glass piece which was beautiful but made by humans. I have always been known as someone who wears big earrings, necklaces and bracelets but I’ve never had a brand-name anything. I don’t usually break a twenty on earrings or a necklace because I’m clumsy and I break things  –  A LOT. So, I love attractive and funky jewelry that is affordable.
Anyhow, this woman says her daughter just found a piece of sea glass. And people are very proud of their finds and curious about what to do with them. I tell her wrapping is not difficult, she can make a necklace and she can goodle, “how to make a sea glass wrap” and find some kid’s crafts or check out my blog where I once found some sea glass crafts and listed them.

 

Anyhow, she says, she thinks the Y will have a sea glass wrap class. I say, “And I think I’ll be the teacher.” She says, “Maybe the brownies would want a class” and I say, “Sure, I could show them.”

I give her my business card and not only does she know where I live, the town, but the street, my neighbors and was going to buy the exact house we live in from her friends, the people we bought the house from. “No way,” she kept saying about our chance meeting. “No way,” about the street I live on and the house and the people we both know. “No way,” since we were both meeting and standing 30 miles away from my house.

 

Here’s the added wild part – it’s at and in this very home where I have learned to seek sea glass, solitude and to walk the beach. It is here where I live near a rocky beach where sea glass can be collected.

 

Sea glass synchronicity. Learning and lessons and stretching and growing far beyond what I ever imagined.

 

One of my friends told me how much I’ve changed since I started collecting sea glass, how much lighter I am, how something shifted in me. “It’s true,” I said but can’t attribute it all to sea glass. i said, “it’s the quiet, the ocean sound, the ions near the water, the being still and notcing the torrent of thoughts rushing around my brain” and that poor ocean absorbs my obsessions and takes them in like a toilet and flushes them away, tumbles them back into something less cutting and sharp, more mature and weathered so that eventually I have thoughts in my head and feelings in my heart that aren’t so mortifying and immature that I can strain to confess them.

 

I love the ocean and the hunt. I love how the water recedes daily, but always returns. I have learned to trust that receeeding is not leaving. I am starting to trust that returns can be depended upon. 

 

 My brother hokes how he was ready to “blow off everything I really needed to do todayto hunt sea glass.” 

 

“You’ll be hard-pressed to make it til next week,” I warn.

 

Some get a taste for sea glass and others are bitten and want to swim as mermaids except in the sand and rocks on the shore. I have wanted to claim this joy as mine alone, a “so who I am lately” thing and I can’t help myself. It’s not mine, like a cake, to cut up and divide and give out. Over and over and over, I tell anyone who listens, “Taste this, it’s great,” and so how can I get mad if they want another serving?

 

I must learn to let the ego recede, let go and see what develops. Who knows why I ended up near this sea? We hadn’t even intended cottage-style or ocean living. We too, were brought in on a current, a wave and I can’t say who else gets to have boats on the same sea and what their destination. I’m still figuring out my own.

Catch of the day: Learn to treasure the present.

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Sea Glass Hunting as Extreme Sport or Sharing the Addiction?

My brother called me last night and we joked about how before long we’d by snorkeling in Hawaii to see if we could catch sea glass AS IT IS TUMBLING in the water. How can we get closer to the glass, the hunt, the thrill and make it even more of a peak experience? Is this hobby, practice or addiction?

 

I can’t help but be led. I’m being led away from my comfort zones and into sharing my passion with others. I am many things but a girl who “shares well with others” isn’t something I recall on any report cards. Even recently, I’ve had some issues of ownership and identity about sea glass collecting, blogging, crafting and selling as though I own any one of those domains. I do not. And yet, it felt so central to my recent identity I felt I did.

 

So there I am Saturday afternoon coming home from a cherished child’s birthday party to make sure my house is open and available for restroom use as my brother, sister-in-law and two nephews are sea glass hunting on “my beach” and, it was a hunt I was not invited on. They wanted some family time and were driving an hour and a half away from home to have it at the bottom of my street. I napped. They hunted. My husband and daughter remained at the birthday party.

 

My eleven-year old nephew smiled as he searched his sandwich bag for a red-orange piece of sea glass with indentations on it. “You think Auntie C will need a diaper when she sees this and craps herself?” he had asked his parents relishing the thought.

 

They tumbled into back door and crowding the dining room table to open their bags. They were more buoyant than the birthday girl being sung to and given gifts.  The image of their chatter and need and desire to share will stay with me for life.  I felt like a specialist on Antique Roadshow letting them know which pieces from the heaps of antiques in the basement or attic are secret treasures and which pieces could be sold, for $1., at a yard sale.

 

When I I pulled out the book, Pure Sea Glassby Richard LaMotte, to read out loud what exactly makes red sea glass so rare (pg. 65, “”because chloride in a specific powder form , was employed in the simplest method to produce  deep ruby-red color,”) and how some sea glass lovers will never find a red on a sea glass hunt. Ever. My oldest nephew was smiling.  he had a red-orange blend with texture. He was eager to hear “while copper could be used to produce red glass, a highly purified oxide of iron could also create an orange-red color.” 

 

My brother had the creamy faded marble so weathered it looked like a mini-marble. He didn’t appreciate how frosty it was, questioning me as though I were doing extra gushing and was insincere. I am not a gusher and have worked hard to learn to offer praise as well as constructive criticism. I proved my point to him by going to the mantle and pulling out a brand new and clear marble I keep handy for such an occasion. “Nerd” be coughed out as I compared the two and then he took them out of my hands to see the difference for himself.

 

My younger nephew enjoyed the hunt but was the first to leave the table to ask my sweetie to play basketball, kickball, Frisbee and and anything sports-related and outside. My brother showed me his funky shaped purple. My sister-in-law showed me the ruby red she found on the walk back to the house. She wanted to know where each of the bottles came from and wanted to know the origins of the glass. She gave each son her two most precious pieces. My brother said, “Find your own, this is mine,” when they asked for his marble. From each parent they will learn something valuable and different.

 

My mother sent me an email entitled, “creating sea glass fanatics” and told me how much she had been hearing about sea glass ALL day. My brother said he could quit his job, get a hut and live on the beach forever. He’d exchange sea glass for food and water and accept visits from family and friends. My sister-in-law is contacting my sister who knows how to do copyright to protect an idea her on came out with (I can’t share it) but will announce it when the millions start flooding in 🙂

Catch of the day: The call from my brother to say how much fun his family had with mine.

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