Seaglass

on what we find, what we lose, and how we rediscover

I don’t remember when I first picked up seaglass, but does anyone?

Maybe, for you, it coincided with the first time your feet touched salty water, something you had never felt before. Well then, the seaglass would be an accessory to a day that’s already etched in your memory, and so you, without a doubt, you would remember the first time you bent down to pick it up, your hands brushing the ocean waves. Of course you would.

From there, maybe it jump-started a lifelong journey of collection, bubbling inside you a need to find a piece in every color, in every shape. An itch you couldn’t reach, a feeling you never had before, but are now entirely consumed by. Then, remembering that first moment becomes consequential - nearly inevitable.

I wish I remembered, but what I do, instead, is a few special moments with a few special pieces that I’ve collected over the years, from as young as eight years old. This feels more important for me anyway; it was never about the first piece of seaglass, it’s always been about the seaglass itself. Where it came from, or how it came to me. Where I keep it now, or how it was lost.

—

When I was eleven, my Mama took us to Fort Lauderdale for a grand family vacation. I remember little to nothing about it, if we drove or if we flew, where we stayed, or what we did. But I do remember the beach, the sand in my toes, and the feeling of the arch of my foot stepping on something hard and jagged. When I bent down to find the culprit, I didn’t just see the piece that pierced me, but two more like it, next to each other, a flock of glass. I picked up all three and tucked them in my pocket.

I didn’t look for more; the three were enough - one a pale pink and trapezoidal, another brighter, like hubba bubba after you chewed it up, and one more, light and soft, and green like the shallow mouth of the sea. For the remainder of the trip, I kept them on me, in my trouser pocket or in my little nylon bag. And when we returned home, I put them on my shrine of things-that-I-love with the other trinkets on my vanity.

In the morning, I would see them as I teased up my hair, and at night again as I brushed it out. Seaglass can be with you for a lifetime, and those three pieces have proved so. They’ve traveled with me throughout it all, from my childhood bedroom to my college dorm, and here today in a little cauldron on my new shrine of things-that-I-love, mixed in between agate and obsidian and pyrite.

—

When I was twenty, my partner bought me a ring from an eccentric vendor at the campgrounds of a music festival. Their stall was built from mismatched tapestries and long tables filled with coiled wire rings in different shapes and sizes. He picked one for me that looked like the inside of a conch, wrapping around itself like an ouroboros. And in the middle of the ring was a sage piece of seaglass wedged tightly into the wire.

I don’t believe it was ever my style, but during that time, I couldn’t go a day without it. For eight months, it hugged my index finger. In class, I would twirl it around and around while my professor lectured about deviance, distress, dysfunction, and danger; when I washed my hands, I would make sure the water doused it just as clean. There were many things I had to apply in the mornings to survive: contact lenses, mint toothpaste, and that sage, seaglass ring.

Then the seaglass was lost, out of the blue and into the yellow, leaving behind an empty coiled wire. I checked under my duvet and beneath my bed, in the dark corners of my handbag beside empty wrappers and loose tobacco, and the bottom of my dirty laundry hamper. When I realized it was gone, I cried and told my partner I was so sorry. I put my empty wire ring in my jewelry box and replaced its spot on my index finger with a pearl.

A few weeks later, my partner brought me a gift, and I thought of candles and ornate lighters from the Greek store a few blocks away, like the first gift he ever bought me. Instead, it was the ring, with a new piece of seaglass wedged into the center coil. Green still, but not sage, more teal and less bright. Moved was an understatement, and I pulled off the pearl and wedged the new seaglass ring onto its digit throne. But as time passed, it no longer suited me - and I no longer wanted to wear it. Week after week, it lived more in my jewelry box than on my finger until one day I wore it on my hand for the last time, and I never even knew it.

—

I hadn’t thought about seaglass for some time, outside fleeting moments, like packing up my jewelry to move to a new home or digging through my cauldron to find a gem that might aid in some craft that could set my mood straight - until three years ago, on the Oregon coast. When I wasn’t even sure I would find it, but went looking for it anyway.

Not to replace what was in the cauldron or make up for lost time with the ring, but only because I wanted more of it. New pieces, different shapes and colors, to hold in my hand for a little while. To see if anything I found would be worth joining me in my lifetime. I scoured the sand on my walk to the ocean and found nothing at all for quite some time.

But I remained focused and fixed downwards, darting my eyes, waiting for seaglass to sing to me or catch the sun and cast pastel shadows across my face. The sand was rough on the Pacific coast, and at times it was painful on my bare feet. But this is how seaglass is made, brushing against coarse sand, saltwater, and unrecycled glass bottles and showing up on shore in fragmented pieces; so I knew the pain meant it must be here.

This patience was rewarded with so much seaglass that I was overwhelmed by it. As I crouched down to a squat and surveyed the rainbow around me, I noticed I was comparing what I saw to what I already had. One piece of seaglass reminded me of the first ring from the campgrounds, frosty and translucent; another reminded me of its replacement, deep and turquoise. I found one more that was pink like untouched gum in its wrapper, but I only thought of my hubba bubba piece at home.

Even still, I bent down, carefully choosing pieces to pick up and turn over in my palm. I stuck the ones that called to me deep in my pockets, as I’ve always done. And there they stayed with me, on the train, plane, car, and another, all the way back home again.

Some pieces still sit on my shrine, and others on my bedside table. A few pieces I’ve lost along the way, either entirely or just in sense, buried in the depths of the things I love or collect; others left to the dust in the corners of my closet. But when I put them all together in my memory, I see a mosaic of pale glass - teal, sage, blush, rose - softened by time, and wrapping me in seaglow.