Aunts, Agates, and Finding Delight

My great aunts, Ruthie and Margaret, used to comb the beach in front of our family place in Washington in search of agates.

As a small boy, I remember watching them from the porch, their heads down, slowly making their way along the water’s edge, bending down here and there, lifting invisible gems to the sun.

My aunts knew how to soften their gaze in order to see the agates amongst so many other rocks, allowing the one in thousand to charm their attention with the tiniest glint of light.

And their haul was impressive: mason jars filled with perfectly translucent stones.

Tumbled together with bits of sea glass in blues and greens, those jars – collected over years – were aglow in amber and honey, light sparking light.

I’m reading The Book of Delights by Ross Gay right now. Not to state the obvious, but it’s a book of delights.

I’ve always thought of the word “delight” in terms of happiness. Yet, in Hebrew, one of the words for delight, hepe, is translated “to bend toward, to be inclined toward (a person or object).” Another is “to soften.” Still another “to be charmed.”

Ross has shown me that delights can be complex; with very hard moments and experiences tucked under – or attached to or connected with – something outwardly pleasant, sweet.

Death and loss, and grief and pain like veins in quartz and chalcedony striped with joy and tenderness, and laughter and love.

Like a barnacle that can cut to bone holding fast to the underside of an agate ready to gleam.

Delights don’t conform.
They don’t have be solely this or that.
They are intimate. And personal.
Delights are chosen and named; in whichever and whatever ways you decide.

Like agates, they can appear opaque, invisible, wholly unexceptional – until you choose to lift them to the sun.

And I like that.

What delight will you find and name and hold to the light today?

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📷: The Wham
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