They remained tucked inside a green velvet pouch. Crystal clear or milky white orbs streaked with bolts and swirls of green, turquoise, brown, orange, red, yellow.
Marbles.
Still and smooth while tightly clasped in hand, they became stubborn and willful once released. I’d try to clutch all two dozen marbles as I poured them from their bag, inevitably dropping a bunch. With a woodpeckery click click click, the marbles fell from my little fingers, spinning across floor, table, counter-top. Rogue marbles rolled wherever they pleased, daring me to retrieve them without releasing any others.
Marbles were magical. Mysterious. How did so many brilliant colors get trapped inside them? Is that stardust glowing in the marbles like miniature dots of reflective light? If one rolls away from the pack never to be found, do the others miss it?
I couldn’t help but Wonder.
Throughout childhood, I’d pull open that green velvet pouch whenever I wanted to hold something beautiful. I loved those marbles until I forgot about them. Four decades later during Childhood Home Clean-Out, the ping-pong table in the basement - once the proud pounding board for teenage angst and competition - was buried beneath decades of stuff to be tossed. One morning, as I was hauling bags of charity stuff up the basement stairs, I noticed a ray of light streaming from basement window to bags of trash. Sunlight flashed off a tiny metal clip strung around a green velvet pouch. The Marbles! I grabbed the bag, dropping it into a pile of Childhood Treasures to be brought home for safe-keeping.
Imagine the joy of that little pouch, rediscovered for the first time in decades! Imagine those marbles, lifted after decades of slumber, waiting to be released from their dark vault into the sunlight!
They waited, to no avail. I never opened that pouch when It flashed me two years ago. I didn’t think about it again - until this weekend when I was searching for a bag of potting soil and knocked over a sand pail in the garage.
Sidewalk chalk, bubble wands, bouncy balls and jacks fell onto the cement floor by my feet.
Jacks!
It's possible I squealed. My 18 year-old son came running, certain I’d fallen off a ladder.
"Jacks! We have to play jacks!" I demanded. Good Sport Son followed me to the driveway. We dropped to the pavement and sat, legs spread into Vs, toes touching. I flipped the jacks from cupped palms to the back of my hands just like 40+ years ago. Then I tossed them onto the driveway - not too close or too far from each other - reaching for the miniature bouncy ball to begin the game.
Onesies. Twosies. Threesies. I was back on the linoleum floor of our kitchen desperate to beat my little sis, while trying to explain to my grown child how to pick up one jack without touching another.
He tried to flip, scatter and retrieve jacks. I laughed out loud. I attempted to sweep a bunch of jacks, scratched up the side of my hand, and laughed even louder. Emboldened with glee, I covered the driveway in chalk figures and flowers. Then I emptied a bottle of bubbles, blowing goopy, glowing spheres large enough to carry a tribe of Glindas across the county.
That evening, I hunted for my pile of Childhood Treasures and the green velvet pouch; tattered, faded and frayed, MARBLES YOSEMITE NAT’L PARK barely distinguishable in its center. Pulling on its knotted black string, I poured the marbles into my hand. One, two, three marbles slipped from my grasp, click-clicking as they bounced across the tile floor.
They are free! I thought, with silly relief.
My hair is graying. My kids are adults. But somehow I still half wonder if these mysterious, magical marbles trapped in a pouch are longing to escape from darkness and safety into light and adventure.
Summer has arrived! Time to take a break from adulting. Laugh out loud like kids in the neighborhood freed from school. Play capture the flag and run a few bases. Sidewalk-chalk a masterpiece. Escape from darkness and safety into light and adventure.
Find our marbles.
Wonder. Imagine.
Play!
