“I found my first purple,” he said, “I never found purple.”
He, C, is four and my neighbor’s grandson. I see him a lot in the summer, enough to keep my daughter’s battery operated cars Thomas train tracks available for his visits. He loves to sea glass hunt and tires of it far less quickly than his cousin and sister so it was great to have time for a longer hunt.
“I only found two before and now I’m lucky,” he said, holding up his bag of mostly green pieces.
“You get better at spotting the pieces with practice,” I said.
He was willing to throw the sharp pieces away; showing me each find to make sure it passed the “not too sharp” for his Nana test. He walked, with his small shoulders to the edge of the water whenever a piece needed to be tossed.
One time he said, “What if I leave this piece here?” he said, “Maybe you can come back later and find it?” He was imagining that one tide could transform broken glass into sea glass.
Don’t we hope for miracle speed when our own brokenness sticks out of the stand sharp and dangerous and able to cut bare feet? Don’t we want to be smoothed over and bathed, transfigured into something precious and worth discovering rather than something relegated to more spin cycles? Who doesn’t want to be worn and glistening on the sand, a gem to be fought over and prized? We all say, “It’s about the journey not the destination,” but I’m not so sure who really means it.
I didn’t tell C how long it takes for broken bottles to become sea glass. He’s young and will learn on his own.
We walked further, in an hour, than I have ever walked alone even braving the slick rocks under a large metal dock before turning back.
“You can find new pieces on the walk back you missed on the way here,” I said. Almost immediately, as if to prove the point I spotted a dark green marble near his feet with white lines so dark they were almost gray. “I found a marble,” I said.
“Can I have it?” he said.
“I need to think about it,” I said.
“It’s so fun when you find one yourself,” I said, “Like your purple.”
I was really thinking I’ve only ever found two marbles on this beach and one I gave away to my daughter. I was thinking, “I want it.’
“I haven’t found a marble,” he said more than once on the trip back. His bag, fuller than it had ever been, was missing my marble.
“Listen to that, the waves through the rocks. It sounds like a rain stick,” I said, half because it was true and half to change the subject.
“Do you want to stop and listen to the waves?”
In my heart, I gave him the marble then. He had offered me, at four, a moment of stillness to stop and share the sound of water hitting pebbles. He would abandon his search for the joy of listening to the ocean.
He noticed how the sea gulls floated on the water; how the waves made them rise up and down but how they didn’t go under.
“Look,” I said, “How about we trade one piece from each other’s bag back on the porch? “
“You can have any of my whites,” he said.
”A fair trade means I can pick any of yours and you can pick any of mine. We put them out and choose one. Do you want to do that?”
Maybe he’d say no after all to protect that purple piece I thought.
“O.k.,” he said.
We didn’t need to chat or fill air. We didn’t speak too much. He showed me his path around the marshy section of grass, said the huge waves could come up so fast he didn’t stay too close to the shore. He told me he hadn’t fished that year. I didn’t tell him as a vegetarian I don’t fish at all. He was a comrade in hunting, a companion on the twisty rocks who enjoyed looking down low and showing me crab shells, and lobster parts but we left them on the sand. “Those smell at home” he said. “Yes,” I said, grabbing only one large white oyster shell, open mouthed but attached.
“You might want to leave that,” he said.
”I like it,” I said, stuffing it into my back.
We ate orange popsicles and laid out our treasures.
“Do you want to count them?” he asked.
”Sure,” I said.
He counted up to twenty and said, “I can’t count higher than that,” and so I finished for him. He had gathered about thirty pieces. And, with little hesitation he took my marble leaving me with about fifty pieces.
I eyed his purple, even lifting it up to the sky but ended by grabbing a solid and thick white piece. I couldn’t bear to take his first purple. He was full, not of popsicles, but of the quiet searching and gathering.
SEA GLASS ARTS with Sea Glass Girl 
