cool rocks

I made this little piece a few weeks ago for my mom's birthday.

My mom loves rocks. I mean LOVES them. She will inevitably come home from walks and hikes with rocks in her pockets. Once when she came to visit, we shipped a box of rocks home that she'd picked up while she was here because they were too heavy for her suitcase.

Her (and my) penchant for picking up rocks on our travels came from her dad -- my Granddad -- who worked in the oil field in Wyoming, often in really remote places. He used to take us all out rock hunting when I was little and I have very early memories of finding cool and pretty rocks during these hunts. (I didn't realize until I was an adult that he was placing the rocks for 3 year old me to "find".)

He had a room in my grandparents' basement that we called the rock room, with rock cutters and tumblers and polishers and every other piece of rock-related equipment imaginable. I have thin pieces of agate he sliced and a pendant necklace he made with a triangle of jade and a butterfly pin he shaped from rocks he found somewhere near Big Piney, where my mom grew up. I have large chunks of petrified wood he polished for my mom and that she recently passed down to me.

I also have a tin full of the small polished rocks I used for this piece. Granddad had drawers and drawers and drawers full of them and when I was a kid, I loved to shove both hands in there as far as I could. When I went to visit my Granddad when he was dying, I scooped a container full from one of those drawers to bring home with me.

My carry-on got flagged by TSA on the trip home because of that container full of rocks. When the agent pulled it out of my bag and asked me about it, I meant to say, "They're my Granddad's rock collection". But instead I said, "They're my Granddad" and burst into tears.

This little piece is so heavy that it needs two nails to hang straight; mom tried just one and it hangs cockeyed. She said she might just leave it that way, she thinks it's cute. I think Granddad would get a kick out of that.