Letting Go Of The Rocks

I was always supposed to be a paleontologist. I had prepared myself for this vocation from the time I was old enough to realize how great was the dinosaur. I didn’t really know what a paleontologist did all day, but since it had to do with collecting bones of the magnificent giant, I named the job as my calling. Indeed, I was already doing this.

I spent long hours developing my career, as early as the first grade, maybe second. Who knows? I just remember always digging for petrified bones. Since my family and I lived in the rural hills of northeastern Pennsylvania, an area I was certain to be engulfed with dead dinosaurs, I was extremely fortunate to be able to conduct successful digs at a moment’s notice. “Stephanie! Go play outside!” my occupied mother of three young kids would implore. This greatly increased the rate of my digs, so I owe part of my early career to my mom.

My excavation budget back then was very small, by which I mean nonexistent, but I assure you, there is no need for money when the earth is pushing up dinosaur bones like a belching volcano. Literally every other rock I picked up--and I understand if you find this dubious--was a piece of dinosaur, specifically the Diplodocus. My expertise in identifying these things was considered authoritative. For example, if I suspected I was holding the fossilized remains of the great reptilian’s jaw, I proclaimed to the vacant yard, “Found a piece of jaw, everybody!” and that was that. I suddenly had some jaw to add to my esteemed collection. Still to this day I find it incredible (in the truest sense of the word) that so many Diplodocuses died in what eventually became my backyard.

When my family moved to New Jersey, and my horizon expanded to include either a marketing career or an art career (or a couple others), the paleontology career was tucked lovingly onto the shelf of nostalgia. In its place was nestled a deep, abiding passion for collecting rocks which continues today. What this has meant, if you know anything about rock collecting, is that my home is littered decorated with a junk heap cornucopia of utterly worthless priceless rocks.

I’ve looked for rocks every place I’ve been, and then hauled them back on planes, trains, and automobiles--from all around the U.S. and countries near and far. Of these, the fossils are my most valued pieces. They’re a record of a life and ecosystem that no longer exist. They quiet my mind when I look at them because they’re about the enormity of time, and the brevity of it, and each one is beautiful in its own chance depiction of what was.

So, you can imagine how difficult it must be to get rid of such treasures, but sadly this is what I know I must begin to do. It’s not because I can’t house them any longer. It’s because with each next year it becomes clearer: I must start the project my children will be required to finish one day--dealing with my things. On the one hand, I’m a planner, so I want to mitigate having to do this all at once later. But on the other, the older I get the more I know this burden on my sons could initiate in an instant. I recognize I’ve arrived at that time in life when you begin to teach yourself how to say goodbye to some of the things you’ve loved. I want to be a kind teacher and a curious student.

Lesson #1 is to recognize that if this were about making choices based on monetary value, it would be one kind of project. But my rocks are about emotion, memory, and history. As for the monetary value of my rock collection, there is not much potential on eBay for me, and no museum curator has called yet about a bequest. Oh, sure. Maybe I could get a few bucks for some of the rocks, but the focus of this project is on my heart, not my calculator.

It’s common for objects to represent life. We are people of objects, of tools and things. They tell our story. Ask any archeologist. But we’re also creatures of meaning, and we symbolize. These things we own aren’t simply a bowl, or a painting, or a rock. They’re also a grandmother, a mentor, a child.

That hunk of obsidian on the shelf over there is the sole object left from the time my future husband and I went rummaging down Glass Mountain, CA. That mountain had a hillside covered with chunks of an extinct volcano’s cooled lava, and our day there further solidified our dating into a lifetime partnership. That rock represents a time in my early adulthood that influenced the course of my life. How could I simply wave that relic away?

And this rock on the dresser is one I found while hiking in Ephesus, Turkey. It symbolizes our family’s tour of southern Turkey before we left the country to repatriate to the U.S. It’s an embodiment of that short but exciting chapter in our lives. It’s a reminder of our courage to live abroad in a country where not too many people spoke the language we spoke, and whose culture was so different from our own. When I hold that rock, I recall how the people there helped us in small ways, welcomed us, and taught me that we’re all so similar despite how it seems the contrary. This is how much this one small rock holds for me.

As each next year goes by, these rocks grow in significance. They stand out like messages on a billboard that read: I am a big deal in your life, because they represent the big deals in my life.

Even if I’m clear-sighted enough to know my belongings aren’t the same as my existence, they nevertheless act as effective reminders of my existence. I worry that if I dump these rocks, I will erase some of my life from memory.

That’s scary.

What I’m curious about is how I might begin to lay my rocks to rest but still trust that I’ll be able to preserve my history. So, for lesson #2, I give this some thought.

My rocks are both reminders of the past as well as things of beauty and interest. They help me maintain continuity of time while also giving me pleasure. Both factors have been my justifications for keeping many of my things. However, I now look further out past my death, to when my kids will have to figure out what to do with my belongings. I see the scenario of two busy men perhaps choosing a few things from the pile, needing to get rid of the rest, all while mourning. The question I ask myself: how can I make this easiest on them? This is when I remember the mixing bowl.

I have a ceramic mixing bowl that I cherish because it was used by my beloved grandmother. There is only one person in my family who has a relationship with this bowl: me. While I see this bowl as a relic of my grandmother, my sons don’t. Whenever anyone worked in the kitchen at her house during holiday time, that bowl was used. It is a billboard of my grandmother. However, my children have no memory of that kitchen, let alone the bowl. For them, the bowl holds no significance. This isn’t because they are cold-hearted or indifferent fellows. It’s because they have their own memories which reside in their own set of objects. I want this for them—to choose for themselves what will be representative.

Suddenly, I see my rocks from a new perspective. They are in service to me, and very likely no one else. That’s a little tough to accept, because what I’m really accepting is my mortality. But I want to be a curious student, so sit with this a bit.

I take a pause to survey my collection. Slowly viewing each one, I’m struck by how truly beautiful these specimens are. They are the coolest things and I do love them.

But not all of them are the marquee pieces of me. If I’m honest with myself, only a much smaller subset sparks a deep, fundamental joy and appreciation for the way I lived my life and who I loved. “Steph, let’s face it,” I say, “Your life is a movie made of a handful of stand-out scenes. Which rocks are those scenes?”

Finally, I see. I’m making a very special movie, not keeping an accounting ledger. Lesson #3.

I turn to my collection and ask, “Which of you are the protagonists, and which are the peripheral plot I need to cut to the edit room floor?”

Gradually, the most important rocks begin to speak up.

The fossils from Westmoreland State Park in Virginia promise me they can single-handedly act as a symbol of the wonderful family vacations we took when the kids were young. Plus, they’re the oldest rocks I own. I wave them on through.

The polished blue and gray geode my parents gave me when I was a child tells me it is a beautiful example of my parents’ continued wish for my happiness. It was their support of something I loved to do. This one I keep.

I’m starting to fall in love with the idea that a small subset of carefully chosen objects can represent a long length of time. I’m creating a classic movie instead of a TV series that drags on for years.

Lesson #4 is making piles. I make piles of pretty rocks to give to youngsters who have entered the backyard paleontology/geology field like I did. I make a pile to place around my yard. Some will be used as the roof of an ant hill one day or a squirrel’s stash house. I know the earth will alternate between consuming them or displaying them, depending on the conditions.

I guess that’s how it’ll be with me one day, too. Right now, I’m part of the world’s display but eventually time will consume me. For today, my job is to savor life, give what I can, be appreciative, try to make a difference. My rocks don’t have much to do with that. I’m the one who must make history with this time I’ve been gifted. Rocks, beautiful and special though they be, are only rocks. I want to give my kids the best possible situation when I pass on, and then I want to give myself the joy of living for today.