The Topaz Stone

I found a polished rock, shaped like a humbug. It definitely looked like hard candy, shiny and striated with gold. It was a bit too large for popping into the mouth, but perhaps some judicious tongue-stroking and sucking would reduce it to a more manageable size. And then eventually it would just disappear.

 

But no, this isn't candy at all. That's just a tease. This is a stone, polished in a grinder until it looks like hard candy.

 

When I see a silky-smooth, irregularly shaped stone like this, I want to go out and buy a rock polisher so I can make my own smooth stones. We used to have one. I bought it when the children were young, thinking to establish a family hobby. But when we realized that it took days of tumbling for the machine to do its work—days of hearing an incessant low hum—we all lost interest. Now I think maybe I should buy myself a rock tumbler after all. It might be worth the annoying noise if I could create smooth stones like this little mock topaz.

 

I could take a handful of polished stones with me wherever I went, dropping them here and there. Leave one on a subway seat. Put several in the children's sandbox at the park. Tuck a few in my neighbors' flower-beds for them to find when digging in the garden. The stones, silent testimony that the snow angels blessed them during the long white winter, will offer the miraculous promise of spring.

 

Copyright 2011 Ann Tudor
www.anntudor.ca