My husband, Paul, and I frequently take a walk along a harbor. The trail culminates in a small, rocky beach. It's a great place to sit by the sea at high tide, and to explore for treasures at low tide.
One day I noticed that someone had painted a rock, a medium-sized, rectangular boulder, with the word "Love." It was colorful and pretty. I posted a picture of it on Facebook with the caption, "Because it's all you need.”
The "Love Rock" as I thought of it, would only be visible at low tide. Yet, whether you could see it or not, I eventually felt it was affecting the atmosphere of the beach.
One sunny day I was sitting on a large boulder near the Love Rock. I was thinking that I felt like the Little Mermaid; that is, the statue of the Hans Christian Andersen character on the Copenhagen waterfront. Well, I'd be the first to admit that was a fanciful thought!
My reverie was broken by the sound of a woman’s voice. “Do you have a camera?” she asked. “I could take your picture.”
I smiled and handed her my phone. “You look so peaceful and you’re next to the rock that says ‘love’ on it,” she said. “You should have a picture of yourself to remember this.”
Wow. The moment felt surrealistic, as I’d just been channeling the Little Mermaid. I smiled for the camera, and the stranger snapped the shot.
I clambered off the rock and thanked her. “Is that your husband,” she asked, pointing to Paul, who was farther down the beach. I nodded. He was collecting empty periwinkle shells.
The woman said she was Canadian, down for the weekend from the Maritimes. The beach near her mother’s cottage, she said, was home to many periwinkles.
We exchanged a few more pleasantries. I wished her a lovely weekend in Maine, and she was off.
All I could think of was the famous line from “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Was that not the “kindness of strangers?”
A few weeks later, the tang of fall was definitely in the air. A gusty wind was blowing. But it was low tide and the sun was warm.
I was far down the beach when a couple approached. “Are you collecting sea glass?” the woman asked. I said I was. “I have a piece for you,” she said, reaching into the pocket of her fleece jacket.
I thanked her and continued on my slow, reflective journey back to where I had started, where the walking trail meets the beach. There had been a storm a few days before, and I was finding many pieces. There were some unusual colors as well, not just the commonplace brown and clear.
I’ve probably collected sea glass for more than 40 years. I don’t do anything with it. I just put it in jars and look at it when I want to be reminded of times spent on the seashore. A friend of my mother’s first told us about sea glass. She lived in coastal Rhode Island. Back then, in the days before recycling, there was much sea glass to be found on the beaches in her town.
When I finally reached Paul, I said, “A woman gave me a piece of sea glass!”
This was worth posting on Facebook, I thought. I climbed over some rocks to get to a flat boulder. I began arranging some of the sea glass I’d found, to take a photo.
I looked up when I heard voices. It was the same couple I’d seen before, returning from the far end of the beach. “I have more sea glass for you,” the woman said.
I had to climb over several rocks to get to her, and planted one of my feet in a puddle as I did so. It was worth it. She filled my hands with sea glass. One piece was a unique orange color. Another was the neck of a small bottle.
“Thank you so much,” I said. I was impressed. I thought I had collected a lot, but she’d outdone me.
“Oh, it’s a hard habit to break once you start,” she said, cheerfully.
“Well, you’ve made my day!”
It wasn’t so much about the sea glass, of course. I enjoy looking for it, and, as I said, keeping it to brighten up gloomy winter days. It was about generosity, and making connections with strangers.
It looked like the Love Rock had worked its magic again.
A few days later, I was back at work as a school librarian. A colleague’s son had been out for a medical procedure. Now he was back. As I welcomed him and asked him how he was feeling, I remembered how excited he had been in the spring, when he returned from a field trip.
He’d found some sea glass back then, and I’d promised to give him some from my trove, from the jar I started all those years ago back in Rhode Island. But I stored that jar away a few years ago, when we were doing some renovations to our home, and I hadn’t found it yet.
Yet, now I saw a way to pay it forward. I would give him some of the sea glass the woman on the beach had given to me.
The Love Rock strikes again!
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