The Magic Rock.

The Little Girl picked up the grey gravel pebble from the semi-circular
drive outside of the tiny white bungalow. It was standard issue gravel
driveway fill. Off white. Porous. Chalky. It was no different from the
tens of thousands of rocks littering the driveway and the alley on the
small street in the small town with millions of rocks in hundreds of
driveways. She turned the rock over in her tiny hand. To her, this small
child, it was something spectral. Something beautiful. She was magic, so
she had to recognize magic, right? She dusted it off on the leg of her
courdory pants, and ran to the front porch of the house.

On the front porch sat the only two women she could honestly say we her
"role models". Her Mother and her Aunt. At the age of six, no little
girl realizes she is building the framework for her entire life with
every gesture, and every decision. If she did, surely the pressure of it
all would crack her. This being the case, life is a game of dolls and
her Mother's make-up. Of watching "Grease", and believing in her heart
that one day she truly can be Sandy. Beautiful, yet pleasantly trashy at
the same time. The best of all worlds. Every day, every moment, every
instant a grain of sand follows her until it builds up into the Great
Dune Of Adulthood where life is never again to be as simple. This day
she is Six, and the world is wrapped up in leg warmers and disco.

She knows her Mother loves her. That is fact. She has drawn her mother
pictures, and made her macaroni necklaces enough to fill all the Hope
Chests in all the universe. Her Aunt, on the other hand, she has given
very few of these treasures. She runs to the porch, and the two women
take a break in the crammed in conversation of two sisters who live
hours apart, to focus on the girl as she runs breathless to them. "Here,
Barbie, I got this for you. It's a Magic Rock (she knows, because she is
magic...)...Keep it forever, and it will bring you good luck." Her Aunt
takes the dusty gravel pebble, and pushes it deep into her pocket. "I
will. I will keep it forever." The little girl smiles. "I'm going over
to Zachary's to play." She speeds off the small porch, and the women
return to their conversation. The moment passes, and life goes on. The
grains of sand continue to form a Life.

Many years pass, and the little girls grows into a Woman. Her life, as
so many lives come to find, never goes quite the way she had expected.
She never became Sandy. She put away the dolls and began playing games
that involved Boys and Heartbreak instead. The grains of sand continued
to build until a Giant Dune had accumulated full of moments, and
experiences. Sadness, and Joy. Family, and Disappointments. Dreams that
Came True, and Dreams That Changed. Somewhere along the journey up that
Dune, she lost her magic. It was so much that she lost it, as she
stopped believing in it, and it slowly faded away.

Her Mother and her Aunt grew and changed, too. For although they were
well into womanhood when the little girl was still small, they grew and
changed just as she had. There were Loves, and Losses. There was
Sickness and Divorce. There were many years where a little magic could
have gone a long way. All the while, the Aunt kept that Magic Rock
comfortable in the velvet lined pocket of her jewelry box. There it was,
and there it would stay. Waiting until the time was right to release the
Magic.

One day, the Little Girl turned Thirty years old. Her Aunt sat on her
bed, and thought of the Little Girl. She thought of the things she had
seen, and the things she had lost. She thought about how many
disappointments that thirty years had handed that Little Girl. She
thought about all the hope that Little Girl should still have inside
that seemed to somehow be missing. She went to the jewelry box, and
retrieved the Magic Rock from its slumber.

In the years that had passed, the Aunt had become an artisan making
beautiful jewelery out of glass and beads. She took the Magic Rock and
encased it in a clear glass with beautiful adornments and hung it from a
long black satin string. She fired it, and cooled it, and wrapped it in
a gold box. She put it into her bag and left.

It was the holidays. She traveled the many hours to see the Large Family
that had once just been the Little Girl. There were many nieces and a
nephew now. They sat there in the living room around the tree. Each one
they opened their gifts, and thanked each other for many things, but the
love more than the gifts. Finally it came time to open the Magic Rock.
The Little Girl now a Woman of Thirty picked up the box, and opened the
shiny gold paper. She opened it, and saw the beautiful piece of jewelry
in the box. Looking closer she saw the chalky white stone. "It's your
Magic Rock..." she said. She told the Little Girl Now a Woman the story
of that summer day long ago, and the rock she had kept all these years,
and the little girl looked at it again with a tear in her eye. She had
forgotten the day, and the event, but she seemed to remember the rock
somehow. Somehow it looked like something she had hidden deep inside her
heart...Magic. "I thought maybe you could use a little Magic." She said.

The Little Girl placed the necklace around her neck the next time she
needed hope. To many it would have been merely a rock. To her it was
time, and love, and the Great Dune of Adulthood all wrapped up in a
shiny package. It was more priceless than any diamond. She knew once she
had known magic, and hoped maybe this would give her back her gift. She
felt it hang by her soul, and she smiled. She remembered Hope, and
Dreams. She remembered Infinite Possiblilty. She remembered Belief. She
wondered if the Magic Rock still worked. She once again held the rock,
and felt its smooth cool beneath her fingertips. She inhaled a long,
deep, clean breath. She breathed out, and saw, for the first time in a
long time...she saw Tomorrow. The Magic Rock did work. She found her
Magic again.