The Things I Carry

My youngest daughter skips ahead under an evening sky dotted with cotton candy clouds. She leaves a line of footprints–two sizes bigger than they were last summer–along the bare strip of sand near the water’s edge. 

Doubling back every few minutes, she hands me one sandy stone after another. I divide her growing collection between my hands and the side pockets of the striped beach bag slung over my shoulder. Her sisters trail behind, catching the breeze in their hair and finding me every few minutes to show me their own treasures.

Tomorrow, this beach will be layered with new driftwood and beach glass to collect. In the fall, the water level will be lower and the beach a little wider. Next spring, it will be dotted with chunks of melting ice and a refreshed batch of rocks. When summer arrives again, I will too—gathering cast off Crocs, balancing beach toys, and following kids who have collected another birthday and handed me another bucket of rocks.

Dipping today’s stones into the water at my feet, I rinse away the grit and admire their colourful details.

There’s a speckled grey one laced with sparkling pink quartz and another that’s a shade of olive green thanks to a mineral I think is called epidote. Someone gives me a salt and pepper one that resembles Minecraft’s diorite along with a deep red one criss-crossed with the darkest grey. Thanks to Google, I know the ruddy one laced with green stripes will do well in our basement rock tumbler. 

Pockets bulging, weighed down by beach stones, I think about the glacier that carried them before me.

Thousands of years ago, during the last ice age, this glacier scraped giant boulders of unfathomable weights from the eroded mountains where they were born in the north. Then, she carried every pound of these boulders, tucked into a river of ice two kilometres thick.

Some remained intact for the journey, and others broke into dozens of pieces in the tossing and turning and tumbling of their trip south. When the glacier melted and couldn’t carry them anymore, some came to rest in fields, others in the way of the foundations of future homes across the region, and still others on this Lake Ontario shore where, battered by the giant rock tumbler of the lake, their rough edges grew smooth.

Millenia later, their new homes are curious fingers and my beach bag pockets.

My daughters hand me other things too. Sandy towels and pinecones. Half eaten bananas and mud pies topped with dandelions. Bouquets of wildflowers and acorns for the blue jays that might visit our backyard. Used bandaids and grass stained socks. Feverish nights and their secret fears. Orthodontist bills and sleeplessness and strong wills and diagnoses I’d wish away if I could. Scraped knees and tantrums and questions bigger than I am.

I see it in other families too. Wet socks and more collected rocks. Half eaten apples and empty water bottles. Lost teeth and homework that’s just too hard. Overstimulated little bodies and impossible losses and  adult-sized struggles.

But there must be truth in the promise of easy yokes and light burdens, because somehow we manage to carry it all.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Moment in Time.”