I don’t know exactly when the passion took her. It couldn’t have been in her youth, living as she did in land-locked Illinois. It’s a passion that can only be accomplished on shores, preferably seashores. So not during her years in the Midwest, that’s sure. She didn’t even see the ocean until she was in her twenties, already married, and following her navy husband to the West Coast from where he was (so they thought) to ship out to the Asian front. But she and he fell in love with that ocean (ah, the incipient passion) and after the war, moved their family to Oregon. Once living in Medford, just three hours from the sea, there were yearly trips to the beach—but with little ones racing hither and yon during those family vacations, she certainly had no leisure to wander along a beach searching treasures—she was too busy making sure that her treasured children were not falling off cliffs or going out too far into the Pacific waves. No, it came later, much later, when she could have a little time for herself. It was certainly associated with the purchase of the little cottage by the sea in Yachats, place that became a kind of refuge for her, place where even occasionally she was able to spend time alone, absolutely alone—rare occasions for the wife of an active and demanding husband and mother of seven active and demanding children. In those moments, she could write, and she could savor all the beauty of the place, that ever-changing sea stretching out before her, and the sharp drop of the greenest of green mountain slopes falling down behind her. I can’t point to the exact moment when Mother began to go hunting on the beach, when she began to move slowly, slowly along it, eyes cast down along the rim of the waves, to see what the sea had brought up that morning, or moving higher up along the beach, to examine the older cluster of stones and driftwood lying there, but imagine it began during those solitary days of Mother’s in Yachats, sometime around the early seventies. Interestingly enough, and this was before the purchase of Yachats, I, her eldest daughter, picked up some extraordinary coral from a Filipino island during my SE Asian journey, and brought the most beautiful piece of it back to Mother, an elaborate piece of lacework created by the sea, knowing she would love it as I did. This makes me wonder if she and I already shared that passion, even before Yachats? What I do know is that we did share it—and I feel sure that if I have become a passionate and inveterate collector of stones and driftwood, it’s because of Mother, because she loved those gifts from Nature so. She filled her house with bowls of sparkling gems of all colors gleaned from her hunts, and pieces of marvelous gnarled and twisted driftwood decorated mantles, windowsills, garden.
A couple of my most precious memories of Mother are the times she and I beach-combed together. Sometimes just on the little beach down below the house, but more often at Neptune beach. I can remember so clearly the last time she and I were there together—just the two of us—making our way through the great piles of driftwood, shouting to one another about our finds, lugging back to a common storehouse our booty. I remember that we had to make two trips in the car back to Yachats to carry all the driftwood we had collected. And one of my favorite photos of her is one where she’s on the beach, bending over in the habitual posture of a beach-comber, her eye already on a gem.
And then she had the idea of making art pieces from her collection. She got flat boards, and she began to make seashore collages, weaving pieces of driftwood together, placing stones amid them, making a harmony of them, then pasting it all to the board. She made one of these for each of her children. I found a perfect grey wood frame for mine (the color of the roofs along the Oregon coast, the color of driftwood), and it hangs on my terrace in Jonchères, just at the entrance, so that it is the first thing guests see upon arriving at the house (and many have commented upon it). For me, it’s as if Mother had carved out a rectangle of the ocean at Yachats and sent it to me—it reminds me of and links me to that beloved place.
After Mother left us, one of the things I did was go through her stones and her pieces of driftwood, picking out the loveliest and most original ones. I got seven bowls (as I remember) and made a bowlful of Mother’s stones for each of her children, and gave each one a piece of driftwood too. It seemed to me that we should each have some of Mother’s sea treasures.
I love those gifts from Nature too and am always bringing them back from my journeys. In Crete I found a marvelous piece of entwined driftwood and carried it the whole journey, sticking out from behind my backpack. Coral from a Florida beach. Incredible driftwood creatures and faces—an eagle found on a California beach, a goose from Oregon, birds and fish from all over, people too, an open-mouthed fellow, an elf emerging from a tree trunk, a couple embracing…. And my stones! I cannot go onto a beach without starting to hunt. I have a whole collection of hearts, another of faces, another of all white stones, I have stones with fascinating patterns, whorls, designs, I have huge stones and small ones, round ones and diamond shaped, squares and rectangles, and of course the hearts! One of the most extraordinary of my stones (found on a French beach near St. Marie de la Mer) can be, depending on how you look at it, an angel, a monk, a mother carrying a child, a donkey! These stones and pieces of driftwood have all found their home here in Jonchères. François made me bases for the most fantastic of the driftwood pieces and they stand in my living room: on the mantle, on the top shelf of a bookcase. Fish and birds are flying from a mobile, also made by François, in the kitchen. I have a round garden in the back yard where hollyhocks grow and which I’ve filled with the second best of my stone collection. The best of the best are carefully placed in a myrtle wood bowl and I sometimes take them out and admire them as one might admire special pieces of jewelry. The very largest (because I’m not above bringing back really large stones too of interesting shapes or colors) are displayed on garden walls or placed in and amid my rose bushes.
When Mother was still with us, my collecting habit was just that, a treasure hunt, a pleasure Mother and I sometimes shared together, and sometimes practiced alone. But now, it has become more than that. I cannot pick up a single stone without thinking of her, and sometimes, as I wander along a beach or occasionally a very rocky river shore, or am walking through a forest, my eye on the alert for an unusual stone or piece of wood, I see myself from outside myself and it is as if I have become Mother, repeating the same movements, the same gestures, bending to the earth and its wealth, rising with something in my hands, stuffing it into my pocket just as she did, bending down again, rising again to examine what I’ve found. (Once, after she was gone, I was in Yachats and her jackets were still in the closet and I put on a pink one of hers, and reaching down into the pocket, found stones she had left there.) I feel I’m not just me at those moments, I’m both of us, Mother and me. (And after all, am I not now the same age she was, the age she’ll always be?). Ever since she’s been gone, the stones and the wood pieces I’ve found, I’ve found with her, for her. I’m never alone in this hunt for the earth’s treasures anymore.
Just a few days ago, François and I stopped to picnic along a lake in the Alps on our way to Venice. Lakes are not usually the best place for stones, but for some reason, this lake had a very rocky shore and inevitably, my eyes looked downward, my head began to bend in the same direction, my body following, before I knew it, I was starting to move slowly along, looking, looking. François knows well this posture of mine by now, and, anxious to be on the way to Venice, kept calling me, “No, come back, come back.” “Just a minute,” I called back (my usual reply). I was sure there had to be a treasure there somewhere amid all those thousands of stones. And there was, of course. I spotted it right away. It’s a relatively small stone of an odd shape, it too could be seen as a number of things but what I mostly see is a dog face, a black and white dog (the face is white but there’s a black at the top of the head, and the eye is black). Other people might see a shoe, a little car, or, from the other side (all grey), a little grey bird with a folded wing.
She’s been gone twenty years this month, but she’s as present and alive to me as if I’d seen her just an hour ago. As I was putting the little stone into my pocket in that beautiful place in the Alps, I whispered out loud, “Here’s another, Mom. Another one for you.”
A couple of my most precious memories of Mother are the times she and I beach-combed together. Sometimes just on the little beach down below the house, but more often at Neptune beach. I can remember so clearly the last time she and I were there together—just the two of us—making our way through the great piles of driftwood, shouting to one another about our finds, lugging back to a common storehouse our booty. I remember that we had to make two trips in the car back to Yachats to carry all the driftwood we had collected. And one of my favorite photos of her is one where she’s on the beach, bending over in the habitual posture of a beach-comber, her eye already on a gem.
And then she had the idea of making art pieces from her collection. She got flat boards, and she began to make seashore collages, weaving pieces of driftwood together, placing stones amid them, making a harmony of them, then pasting it all to the board. She made one of these for each of her children. I found a perfect grey wood frame for mine (the color of the roofs along the Oregon coast, the color of driftwood), and it hangs on my terrace in Jonchères, just at the entrance, so that it is the first thing guests see upon arriving at the house (and many have commented upon it). For me, it’s as if Mother had carved out a rectangle of the ocean at Yachats and sent it to me—it reminds me of and links me to that beloved place.
After Mother left us, one of the things I did was go through her stones and her pieces of driftwood, picking out the loveliest and most original ones. I got seven bowls (as I remember) and made a bowlful of Mother’s stones for each of her children, and gave each one a piece of driftwood too. It seemed to me that we should each have some of Mother’s sea treasures.
I love those gifts from Nature too and am always bringing them back from my journeys. In Crete I found a marvelous piece of entwined driftwood and carried it the whole journey, sticking out from behind my backpack. Coral from a Florida beach. Incredible driftwood creatures and faces—an eagle found on a California beach, a goose from Oregon, birds and fish from all over, people too, an open-mouthed fellow, an elf emerging from a tree trunk, a couple embracing…. And my stones! I cannot go onto a beach without starting to hunt. I have a whole collection of hearts, another of faces, another of all white stones, I have stones with fascinating patterns, whorls, designs, I have huge stones and small ones, round ones and diamond shaped, squares and rectangles, and of course the hearts! One of the most extraordinary of my stones (found on a French beach near St. Marie de la Mer) can be, depending on how you look at it, an angel, a monk, a mother carrying a child, a donkey! These stones and pieces of driftwood have all found their home here in Jonchères. François made me bases for the most fantastic of the driftwood pieces and they stand in my living room: on the mantle, on the top shelf of a bookcase. Fish and birds are flying from a mobile, also made by François, in the kitchen. I have a round garden in the back yard where hollyhocks grow and which I’ve filled with the second best of my stone collection. The best of the best are carefully placed in a myrtle wood bowl and I sometimes take them out and admire them as one might admire special pieces of jewelry. The very largest (because I’m not above bringing back really large stones too of interesting shapes or colors) are displayed on garden walls or placed in and amid my rose bushes.
When Mother was still with us, my collecting habit was just that, a treasure hunt, a pleasure Mother and I sometimes shared together, and sometimes practiced alone. But now, it has become more than that. I cannot pick up a single stone without thinking of her, and sometimes, as I wander along a beach or occasionally a very rocky river shore, or am walking through a forest, my eye on the alert for an unusual stone or piece of wood, I see myself from outside myself and it is as if I have become Mother, repeating the same movements, the same gestures, bending to the earth and its wealth, rising with something in my hands, stuffing it into my pocket just as she did, bending down again, rising again to examine what I’ve found. (Once, after she was gone, I was in Yachats and her jackets were still in the closet and I put on a pink one of hers, and reaching down into the pocket, found stones she had left there.) I feel I’m not just me at those moments, I’m both of us, Mother and me. (And after all, am I not now the same age she was, the age she’ll always be?). Ever since she’s been gone, the stones and the wood pieces I’ve found, I’ve found with her, for her. I’m never alone in this hunt for the earth’s treasures anymore.
Just a few days ago, François and I stopped to picnic along a lake in the Alps on our way to Venice. Lakes are not usually the best place for stones, but for some reason, this lake had a very rocky shore and inevitably, my eyes looked downward, my head began to bend in the same direction, my body following, before I knew it, I was starting to move slowly along, looking, looking. François knows well this posture of mine by now, and, anxious to be on the way to Venice, kept calling me, “No, come back, come back.” “Just a minute,” I called back (my usual reply). I was sure there had to be a treasure there somewhere amid all those thousands of stones. And there was, of course. I spotted it right away. It’s a relatively small stone of an odd shape, it too could be seen as a number of things but what I mostly see is a dog face, a black and white dog (the face is white but there’s a black at the top of the head, and the eye is black). Other people might see a shoe, a little car, or, from the other side (all grey), a little grey bird with a folded wing.
She’s been gone twenty years this month, but she’s as present and alive to me as if I’d seen her just an hour ago. As I was putting the little stone into my pocket in that beautiful place in the Alps, I whispered out loud, “Here’s another, Mom. Another one for you.”
