Rocks And Stones Won't Hurt My Bones

I have no idea where I acquired this. Logically I would say "my mother" since she was always the one hauling rocks and driftwood and bionic pine cones home; my father complaining of the weight of boulders in his car trunk with Mom's argument being, "...but there are fossils in there." I have that boulder by my back gate now--the tiny animal indents collect pools of water.

. I know my parents found large deposits of amethyst when they were in Nova Scotia, so maybe there? Some day I'll pass it on, but for now, I like holding it. I've only been in Nova Scotia once. I was going to London on a Pan Am jet, and the windshield blew out over the Atlantic Ocean. We had to drop thousands of feet in altitude very quickly: some were calm, some were crying, some were praying. They tried landing us at Bangor, but the runway was too short, so we landed in Halifax on another short runway and I spent the night sleeping on molded plastic seats. We couldn't leave the airport, not knowing when the next plane was coming in. I was wearing an amethyst ring--that I had bought at a Bermondsey flea market in London.

As a child, I had to go to West Virginia where my parents spent their free time building a church camp. My brother and I felt like child labor, which we were. We had to clear the land, sleep in pup tents-- (until a building was constructed,) digging trenches to keep out the copperhead snakes out at night. One afternoon my mother showed up in a field where I was and said, "Let's go climb that mountain," (pointing above our heads,) and of course it was straight faced lichen covered granite with only the tiniest grasping points. No rappel and belay. No "North Face." I was wearing Keds.

We made it to the top, this jagged edge, and I looked down and found this bone. We never could figure out how an animal managed to get up there (the bone is about 4 1/2 inches long.) My father's running joke was that it was a cow. One more talisman in a home full of them.