DATELINE: November 21, 2020, from Lady Proverbs, somewhere on the Oregon coast

I found a beautiful little white rock on the beach today. It’s almost ball shaped, which is unusual in the panoply of beachcombing I’ve done, and is semi-translucent. So a memory of my much younger self swam to shore and there I was a child sand-hunter looking for shells and agates. Since I’ve always been writing a fiction novel in my head, seemingly from infancy, I knew that my younger self would not take the rock at face value. Instead my young, under ten-year-old self would have imaged the round rock was really a valuable pearl from a gigantic oyster that lived in coral beds just off a secret unknown island of amazing and valuable things; something that Jules Verne would have penned.

Then I would imagine myself landing there and the various adventurers with me. I would be older, like Barbie’s age, and men like Robert Redford and Keith Partridge would love and admire me, and perhaps fight over me. Then I’d just run away on a horse and find Paul Newman in a homey fort and we’d live in harmony for all time.

Today I looked at the rock and I hoped it was an agate but I knew it was probably just a ball shaped piece of quartz; pretty common stuff around here. Yet it was still intriguing and the rock-ball felt good in my palm, substantial in some way. While I still wanted to give the rock a history it didn’t have, I appreciated it for the small wonder that it brought on a beach walk on a glorious November day that left worry and disease behind, somewhere inland.

As a well-seasoned woman, I now have the super power of appreciating the small moments in life and letting that be enough when it needs to be enough. And for a single moment, the giant pearl and I enter our refuge of peace together, my shoes crunching on the wet sand and the damp pearl warming in my pocket, safe and still.