sea glass

Well hello my fellow bloggers and blog readers.  I’ve been MIA for a while now, not because blogging isn’t high on the list of things I want to do, but because it’s relatively low on the list of things I have to do.  At any rate, I’ve got some time now, and I think I’ll spend it doing what I want.

Over the long holiday weekend my husband and I stayed with my parents in their sweet new digs at the beach.  It was a lot of fun hanging with family, playing on the beach.  Among other things, we took a preemptive strike at the impending caloric overload by taking a long walk to the pier.  Then we enjoyed an amazing Thanksgiving feast.  Good times were had by all.

I had but one nagging distraction.

My mom has an impressive collection of sea glass.  It sits in a tray, on a table, by the front door.  Each time I walk in or out of the house I spy that collection and look on it with more than a touch of envy… is it bad to covet your mother’s sea glass?  I’m pretty sure it doesn’t break any commandments, but I think we can all agree – it probably isn’t good.

Sea glass is a pretty awesome thing and it’s not hard to understand why my mom’s been collecting it.  Boiled down, it’s just a bunch of broken bottles made smooth and uniquely beautiful by the power of the ocean pushing it back and forth against the coarseness of the sand.  The shine of the glass wears off and it becomes opaque.  Edges that once would cut are rendered harmless.  And all the while, through the entire process, the little piece of glass does not shatter; that’s  pretty amazing – if we would all strive to be just a little more like the glass and a little less like the sand and the ocean, wouldn’t that solve some problems?

But, as I often do, and most assuredly will do again, I digress.

For a brief moment on Thanksgiving Day, I stopped secretly plotting how to steal my mom’s collection, one piece at a time (until it was mine, all mine! *evil laugh*) and I had an epiphany:  I too could start a collection of sea glass.

Genius.

The day after Thanksgiving, my parents, my husband, and a Ziploc bag in tow, I headed off in search of what would surely be the beginnings of The Best Sea Glass Collection in the World – or at the very least, in my household.  And I was not disappointed.  We walked for hours up and down the coast and found a respectable amount sea glass.  See that red piece there?  That’s the big winner of the day – all thanks to the recently lasiked, beautiful blue eyeballs of my husband.

Sure, it may be cheating to force three people to hand over every bit of sea glass they found for my own selfish gain…

But whatever…

I’m like the ocean.

I went home and began the search for the perfect container for my newly found and acquired gems.  I remembered a dish I had been given, by my sixth grade teacher, on my wedding day (how ’bout that, Mrs. G?), and knew it was just the thing.

I’m not sure what’s better, the unexpected joy of finding the treasures as the ocean coughs them up onto the sand, or the time spent walking in silence save for the rumble of the waves, smelling the salt in the air, letting my mind wander.   It’s going to be addicting, but it’s a good kind of addiction and I simply can’t wait to go walking again, along the coast, searching for another piece that wouldn’t shatter.

jw