Black Rock
By ice rivers
- 212 reads
Black rock glistens in the rain.
When I was a child, I learned to swim at Crystal Beach. The bottom of Crytsal Beach is full of thousands if not millions of rocks. As a result, on a calm day, the water is Crystal clear, hence the name for the beach.
My father as well as my grandfather learned to swim here as did my brother and sister as well as my children. We all dove for rocks.
Forty yards from the shore, the water is over my head. I remember hearing the warning "don't go out over your head". I took that warning seriously. I'd spent most of my life at a safe depth, thirty five yards from the beach.
When I learned to swim, I realized that it didn't matter how much water was beneath me as I was safe on the surface. I began to venture over my head.
Been over my head a lot since then.
I heard of a rock pile that once you reached it, you could stand on the rocks and keep your head above water. If you stepped off the pile, the water was deep and not as clear as near the shore. Ten feet from the rock pile, a black rock stood out from all the rest. Black rock was the North Star. When you came to the black rock, that meant that the rock pile was very near.
Safety and momentary security
All of the other rocks surrounding black rock appeared brownish barely indistinguishable one from the other. They had remained in place for God knows how long. Decades...centuries.
The first swim of the year was always a great moment. Before you went in, you'd always ask "how's the water today and the answer was always the same...."It's cold until you get used to it...then it's beautiful"
As I taught my kids to swim, I told them about the rock pile and the black rock. Eventually, they found both. Standing on the rock pile was an achievement, a step towards daring, a sign of growth, a symbol of eternal summer. Swimming in from the rock pile, we always passed black rock. always in the same place.
My children grew.
My parents passed away.
We moved.
I took what I imagined was my last swim at Crystal Beach.
I decided to take black rock with me.
I lifted the rock from its resting place and brought it into the shore. On the shore, drying out...black rock lost some of its mystique. It kinda looked like just another rock.
We built our house.
I placed black rock in the garden.
It's been many years now. We've moved several times. We always take black rock with us.
Whenever my kids come to visit, they always look in our gardens to find black rock and when they do, we all flash back to family days when we were all together. The summer of our lives
Black rock shimmers when it rains.
It takes on its original ebony and stands out from every delicacy in every garden...standing watch. Strong, exceptional, still showing the way home.
When it rains as its doing today, I tend to look at the garden wsherever we might be.
Always there black as night.
Black rock
Ancient and adaptive.
Glistening.
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