Heart Rocks.

Stella, 2009

When I was a kid, and my family would go to the Maine or Massachusetts shoreline, my mom would always find heart-shaped rocks and show them to me.  She would keep one, and I would find one of my own and keep it too.  Since then, even now, I have never been to a beach where I haven't looked for one heart-shaped rock that I slip into my beach bag and bring home.

The twins find them now, too.  Stella likes to find as many as she can!  We have many beach rocks throughout the house, or even still hiding in beach bags full of plastic beach toys covered in sand, that we forget to empty out, until next year's trip to Maine.

We already have a "rock garden" full of beach rocks.

Michael stopped looking for hearts, early on, but still likes to find ones that have interesting geological features, not focusing on shape.

On Easter, we looked for egg-shaped rocks on the beach.

Stella has always partial to the perfectly rounded ones.

But I still find my heart on the beach each year.  It doesn't have to be perfectly shaped.  I just know when I've found the right one.

I don't give them away, usually.  I show them to the kids, then put it in my pocket or my bag.  I don't give my heart rocks away.  Maybe I keep them because of the childhood memories; I don't know.  When I find the right one--the one that is smooth under my fingertips, and has a divot or wedge on one end, and a rounded, soft, point on the other--I can't put it back on the beach.  It feels like I'm going to miss it, if I throw back my heart, into the water, or to let it fall and scatter among the piles of rocks at the high tide line of the sand.  I'll miss my heart rock.  Nature made them, not me.  They formed all on their own.  They don't belong to me, I guess, but they feel so much like they do.


I think when our heart is touched by someone deeply, or times in our lives pass far too quickly, we miss our hearts as much as we miss those people and those moments... when they are gone...  I mean.

 It feels like it slipped from my fingers, into the vast waters of the Atlantic.  The foamy surf quickly comes along and you can't see it anymore... and it's pushed along with the waves.  And your chest aches, yeah? Even if there are hundreds of heart rocks in my house-- in jars, on shelves, and in rock gardens, all around me-- I'll miss the ones that fell out of my hand.