The Green Stone Woman.

Many years ago, when I lived in Sonoma County and my son was still alive, I wrote a long story called 'The Green Stone Woman.' It was a story about my life then, disguised as a psychological fairytale in which there was no prince charming and in the end of which I died. I had a lot of moments of huge happiness then and other moments of terrible heartache. I felt I lived in a fantastic story myself and that in a way I had lost touch with any sort of ordinary life and only lived in extreme forms of emotions and conditions and predicaments.

The most normal people in my life then, although they could not even pull me close to near normality, were my two children who entered my life on a regular basis and reminded me of where I had come from and the heartache I felt about having left them behind.

One of the things we did, was go to Goat Rock beach where the Russian river emptied into the Pacific ocean and where there was a huge amount of stones washed up on the beach in all sorts of colors and patterns. It was fun to walk around with your head bent down to look for the prettiest stones when they were wet from the shallow waves washing over them. This released all the colors and patterns in them that you could not see as well when they were dry.

My son and I enjoyed doing this the most and we looked for the best stones we could find and became very picky. After a while, we decided to only collect the green stones with special patterns in them.

Now, I don't remember which came first, all those green stones, or one single accidental green stone and the story, but I became the Green Stone Woman and this fact is so intertwined with the existence and memory of my son, that I had pushed it out of my mind until today, when a photo on another blog reminded me of those days on that beach. I guess I am ready to remember that now.

In my mind's eye, I can see us walking there in the bright sunlight, getting excited about an especially pretty stone. My son's patience at looking for them was phenomenal. He was a teenager and you don't expect a teenage boy to get excited about looking for pretty stones with his Mom.

You have to be patient with me. It's like I'm pulling this out of a tiny bright pinhole in a big dark void. These are memories I don't dare look at usually.

I can hear my son's voice, the sound of it, the melody of it, the words he used, the way he talked to me in a slightly joking fashion. I see him walking beside me, very much taller than I was and not done growing yet.

I have about fifteen of those green stones here. I don't remember what happened to the rest of them. It's so long ago and far away. I also still have the story of The Green Stone Woman, but I have had no interest in reading it up to now, because it was written by someone who was emotionally trapped in fantastic highs and miserable lows.

The stones connect me to my son, more than anything else does, more than his ashes. My son is a constant presence in my life. I never question his nearness to me. Sometimes I think that if I will look over my shoulder at the right time, I will see him there, smiling at me. Guarding over me. Somehow making impossible things happen.

I don't know if I can find green stones in this region. I haven't looked for any yet and haven't really been in the right place and in the right frame of mind, but I'm going to start looking for them now, if there is an opportunity. It will also reconnect me to the woman I was then, because although I went through all those highs and lows, it was also a time in which a large part of me became liberated and started to form her own thought processes. It wasn't all bad.

Remembrance isn't such a bad thing, you just have to be ready for it and then give it the place and the honor it deserves. I wish all of you could have known my son, but you know him a little bit, because you know me and we were very much alike.

So tell me, do you have anything like green stones in your life?