How a Sparkly-White-Rock with a Curiously-Perfect-Flat-Side taught me that I mattered.

The route from school-to-home was twenty minutes of buckboard jostling. Crossing other winding roads and passing white churches, the Town Meeting Hall and homes built before America was a country. And of course, a hard right turn at PIZZA-GRINDERS-SODA.

The low squeal of bus brakes signaled the end of the school day and soon the droning voice of the driver would wake us from ourselves.

‘Morse Road.’

In a time before school backpacks, I had to gather books and freshly mimeographed homework assignments that had splayed out on the seat next to me. And, of course, be sure not to forget the folded lunch bag with its smell of today’s egg-salad sandwich. (Which, if mentioned when I got home, I would be directed to ‘leave it on the breezeway’ and would be assured ‘It will be fine for the rest of the week’.)

As the bus slowed, older boys, girls, bullies, and awkward-kids-like-me would rise together, zombie-walk forward and recess-hop the three steps onto the dirt street we called home. A faint and unemotional ‘watch for cars’ could be heard from behind us as we spread out down the road.

Big brothers ignoring little brothers. Sisters walking quietly together and a few timid waves as the group got smaller at each mailbox.

This was the 60s – no SUVs idling to meet the bus.

Most days, this dusty dead-end road was a comforting way to shed anxious lunchtime moments, mind-numbing flashcards and outdated filmstrips. But as it turned out, this was not most days. This was a magical day.

My ritual kicking, scuffing, and ignoring others was about to pay off. A precious gem. Bright-white­ ­in a sea of earth-tone rubble — embedded sparkles and a curiously-perfect-flat-side. Not a rock but a treasure.

Certainly, others must be watching so I palmed it and prepared my most convincing *nothing* if asked. And I squelched my instinct to yell ‘I SAW IT FIRST’.

It was not required, nobody cared. (I knew Mom would.)

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Typically when we got home, some part of dinner was already simmering on the stove. Snacks on the table and Mom back in her sewing room to ‘finish up a few more stitches’.

Today I would skip the snack and go directly to her room. Following the smell of sewing machine oil that had been warmed by the day’s work. I plunked down on my spot atop the mahogany hope chest her dad made when he returned from the war.

For all her life — Mom’s sewing room was her workshop, business headquarters and sanctuary. Her muse lived there with her. In this place, she could fix anything that required a needle n’ thread and would spend decades creating heirlooms from pieces of cotton and wool.

Remake a grandmother’s moth-eaten 1920’s wedding dress for a modern bride? ‘No problem.’

Take 3 inches off the waist of 12 pairs of slacks for a lady who lost weight? ‘Call me in a week.’

Create 200 quilts? ‘Sure, but that will take a few more decades.’

As you entered her room you did not need to say anything. She knew you were there. When the thread was cut, seam sewn, or last measurement checked she would turn from her work and greet you with her smiling blue eyes over her readers.

“Hi Hon, how was your day?”

That day I blurted out about my treasure. We talked about what made it special. She agreed — these sparkles and curiously-perfect-flat-side were extraordinary and stories about how it might have happened were debated.

Never once did she let-on that it was likely just a part of a demolished marble step that the county trucks dropped as part of ‘clean fill’ when our rural-road washed out.

I remember giving her my special find that day. She said, ‘I will treasure it — but if you ever want it, I will keep it here and you can ask for it back.’

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Two years after Mom passed, this memory came flooding back to me when I was once again sitting on the mahogany hope chest in her last sewing room.

Dad told us he wanted to parse it out to her quilting friends, and we all wanted to make sure memories were not sent out with the stuff.

There were projects still on her worktable, quilt blocks tacked amongst family pictures and stuffed animals given by her grandchildren. But Mom and her muse were gone and the smell of sewing machine oil had long since faded away.

As I opened one of her thread cabinets I found the sparkly-white-rock with-a curiously-perfect-flat-side. Alone in her room, I cried. All these years this precious rock mattered to her and that meant I mattered too.

I was not crying because this was a new revelation — but because it represented something she made clear to me my entire life.

I was not her popular kid, not her athletic kid — not her mechanical kid. I was her awkward-dreamer kid. And that was ok.

Even though I mostly saw her elbows and back while she stitched, cut, chopped, sautéed – I never felt ignored.

When she found me doodling on my math notebook, she signed me up for a cartooning class. When a school bully made fun of me for drumming pencils on my books, she signed me up for the Drum & Fife Corps.

She taught me to cook. She taught me to sew. She loved my art. And she taught me that while I was different than other kids, that was ok.

And maybe her most important lesson — ‘When you fall on your face — pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on’.

This was a skill she had used many times in her life, and because I was like her, I would need to know it too.

I never remember Mom sitting idle.

In the early years it was getting things done. Hand-me-downs altered; holes mended. Drapes for the dining room, seat covers for the jalopies that her sons could afford. I even remember going to the junk yard to get old seatbelt straps so she could sew a harness to help hold a car engine steady while I worked on the transmission. Her idea.

When raising three boys required less of her time, she and her muse turned more artistic. Hundreds of quilts, millions of stitches, dozens of rugs and learning everything there was to know about gourmet cooking.

She loved deeply and showed her love with her work. Today, I recognize that her busy hands was as much about self-soothing as it was about making sure she mattered to others.

Mom was driven to create. That part of me is from her.

It is also the part of me that likes sparkly-white-rocks, wants to yell “I saw it first” when I see things no one else does and why I find solace when my hands are busy.

And its her-part-of-me, that wants a magical story when a rock has a curiously-perfect-flat-side.

It has been over 50 years since I first found this treasure, and 10 years since Mom left us.

Today, the curiously-flat-side sits quietly on my desk. Sometimes I palm it and say to myself “I saw it first”.

But mostly I think of Mom, and all the ways she taught this awkward-dreamer-kid that I matter.