Sea Glass
Finding joy in any chance to make space for what’s to come
I sat on a stool in the kitchen as my partner at the time crafted a Saturday morning breakfast feast. She’d been a chef earlier in her life, so every meal we had was a five star event. She taught me so many things in our many years together. Not only how to cook, but also other, more lasting lessons about what it means to be nourished.
She told me if two people can cook together, if they are able to move with ease in a small space, give and receive gentle pushes and bumps without growing irritated—If they can get creative with limited counter space to dice celery, chop nuts, or trim the excess fat off an overpriced T-bone, their sex will probably be really, really good.
She also made me think of cooking as an existential process. “Only follow the recipe as long as you absolutely need to,” she’d say. Or, “Clean as you go, it keeps you sharp.” And the one that, even after more than twenty years, still resonates in my mind, “If your faith in what you’re doing waivers, your outcome will reflect this, and never positively.”
That morning, she plated our poached eggs and drizzled them with hollandaise and a dash of fresh basil garnish. Beside them she artfully placed two long strips of bacon, and then a broken half strip, less crispy, diagonal across their waists like a belt. Two slices of sourdough, lightly toasted and buttered, completed the presentation. “Voila,” she said as she raised the ready plates. She then insisted we sit at the dining room table, rather than do our usual and casually eat in the kitchen. “Let’s be civilized today, shall we?” she said.
How hadn’t I noticed that she had already set the table? I blamed coffee. Or better, a lack of it. I took my spot and scooted up the chair. My stomach growled audibly, which made us both chuckle. “You ready?” she said, knowing the answer. I unfurled my cloth napkin and placed it on my lap—which is something else she taught me. Prior to meeting her, I was definitely a paper napkin sort of guy.
I froze as I reached for the spoon, whose smooth edge I’d use to pierce the domes of the perfectly poached eggs. In the center of its shining bowl sat a small green gem. The concave emerald reflection exposed the whole of it in one glance. I knew this bauble—she and I found it at some point during our time together. A beach souvenir. She called it a mermaid’s tear.
I picked up the spoon, keeping the jewel in its balance, and looked at my partner. “What’s this for?” I asked. “Tom,” she said, pausing for an extra second after saying may name, “I have some news.” I looked at the spoon, then back at her. She bit her lip, smiling and not smiling at the same time. “What is it? Is everything OK?” I asked. Then I dropped the spoon, which jarred the tear onto the tablecloth. It wobbled to a stop and I was briefly distracted by its color. In the morning light it shined the same as my irises.
I looked across the table at my partner. At her eyes. Light blue. A reflecting pool. A big sky. When she was tired, her eyes sat heavy like turquoise. Wishful patches laced with dark veins, highlighting emptiness. Our gazes met, and together we squinted at each other quizzically. The rising steam between us was a reminder that we had time to spare before digging in. Things needed to cool down. “I’m pregnant, Tom,” she said. “We’re going to have a baby.”
Today I met a stranger downtown to hand off a mason jar filled with sea glass. It’s a small lot I’ve accumulated through the years. Bits of colorful broken bottles—emerald greens, lost blues, vintage browns, transparents and textured—all from various places I’ve lived and visited, collected with friends and loved ones.
The piece my partner set in my spoon—the baby piece—sits at the bottom of the jar. It’s a reminder of loss. Of a 911 call. Of a lost, unnamed child my partner knew in her bones was a little girl. It’s a reminder that prayer is both important and futile. That family is anyone who steps up.
Another chunk has something inscribed in Khmer—which makes sense since I found it in Cambodia on the shores of the Gulf of Thailand.
There’s also a nickel-sized wedge of blue crystal a friend from way-back-when sifted from a mound of wind swept ocean sand. “Shells are whispers,” she said. She always said powerful shit. “Put one up against your ear and you’ll hear a million possible answers. But pieces of glass—they are different. They are truths.” She handed it to me.
Truth, she called it. That little piece of glass in my hand was truth.
She asked me what I was thinking about right then. I couldn’t say. Honestly, it didn’t seem like I had been thinking about anything. “Whatever you’re thinking about when a piece of sea glass crosses your path demands your attention,” she said. Her words gave me chills. Could it be that nothing needed my attention? Surely that wasn’t possible.
I flipped the piece over, feeling its cool and polished weight in the center of my palm. I made a mental note to think about more things. About more important things. I had been wasting my time. Bouncing from this to that, barely holding down jobs and failing in relationships. I grabbed onto whatever fell into my lap. Kept neat my own sharp edges with no intention of ever softening them.
I didn’t know then, shit, I couldn’t have known then—but I was I was hiding from my truths. Trying to be something else. Someone else. Someone who, I eventually believed, was not worth the effort to gently bend down and scoop up. I grew to be lost in an eternity of dunes from which I’m only now emerging.
This shard of blue glass, of memory, is now caught between a group of larger pieces in the lidded jar. They hold it. Protect it. The old truths—accurate and not—intertwine with the new.
My collection of sea glass is not just from the sea. Many bits are also from riverbanks or lakes large enough to toss and turn its keen corners until they’re sufficiently worn down. Until they can pass lightly across fingers, across lips, across cheeks. I tend too find them everywhere.
These fragments are now so smooth that they no longer resemble their actual composition. Their atoms have evolved into something anew. Something equally hard, and yet delicate. Something with a forgiving feel, for example, on a tongue. An echo of the candies filling a sun-catching crystal on my grandma’s coffee table. I want one. I want to pull the cellophane ends and spin out a glassy ball. But my desire always outweighs the experience of actually having one.
I listed the assortment on Facebook Marketplace along with a zillion other random things in one of my regular fits of extreme downsizing. This time around I had just retuned from an Arctic backpacking adventure where, once again, I was reminded of how little I actually need. So much of what I carry is useless. Dead weight.
Hiking trips are always refreshing in this way. I hike all day for weeks and inevitably question my accumulations. And not only my material goods, but also my aspirations, my relationships, my relationship with money, and more. Sure, I need some of these things, but do I need all that I have? Of course the answer is a definitive no.
I walk along whatever trail I’m on and make plans to cut my mounds of excess weight upon my return home. Then later, after a handful of trips to the Goodwill, a few rounds of eBay and Facebook Marketplace sales and loads of junk to the dumpster, I’m satisfied. Because I have less. Yes, I still have too much, but I don’t have the energy to let go of any more. Not right then, anyhow. There will be another time.
The person who wanted to buy my jar of sea glass originally responded to my Marketplace ad by telling me she didn’t know if she actually wanted to pay for it. “I understand,” I wrote back. “I probably wouldn’t either.” I told her if she ever decided she wanted the collection I’d be happy to hold it for her. A few days later I got another message: “OK, I want it. But I have to wait until I get paid,” she said. Which, I’ve learned, is a softer way of saying, I probably won’t buy it but I’m also afraid to say so.
Three weeks later she reached out again. “Is the sea glass still available?” she asked. I was out of town at the time, so we made a plan to meet up at the co-op when I returned. “I’ll be under the awning,” I told her. “I’ll have a brown bag sitting on the table.” We confirmed the price—twenty dollars—and I expected her to balk. She didn’t. When she scooped it up, she told me she’s studying to be a shaman and that she likes the idea of sharp things growing dull. “Through age and turmoil,” she said.
With every sale I release a bit of my weight. With every sale I am relieved. Lighter and suddenly spacious. There’s more room for opportunity. For imagination. For wonderful boredom.
I don’t ever regret this letting go. Even if the item is energetically or sentimentally charged. If anything, I welcome it. I’m always happy to be rid of my disparate and unnecessary material parts. I want to move lighter through this life.
There’s a certain reassurance in relinquishing the crumbs that trace the now me to the past me. I enjoy seeing this line, this proof of progress. I like to acknowledge it and move on.
These days I find joy in the chance to make space for what’s to come. And in order to make space, I need to disencumber myself of the clutter, the jars of sea glass, I’ve been stockpiling for decades.
Beautiful, Tom.