The stay-at-home dad: The special rocks are everywhere

In my childhood, I considered agates and sand dollars to be the most valuable items to find in nature. If I were to spot a genuine gold brick laying on the beach, I’d have tossed it aside to see what “better” treasures might’ve been underneath.

During a few summer visits to my grandparents in the midwest, my rock-obsessed older cousin convinced me of the absolute preciousness of a genuine agate. Similarly, my mom always taught me to keep a special eye for “lucky” sand dollars when beachcombing at the ocean. If only I had associated similar luck to finding gold bricks.

I realized this summer that my love of sand dollars endured, because I became positively giddy when my oldest daughter found one on the beach on a recent trip to the Puget Sound. My reaction inspired her and my other three kids to go on extensive sand dollar hunts, and we wound up collecting at least two dozen of them throughout the week. It made our car stink, man.

For the uninitiated, sand dollars are flat sea urchins with hard skeletons (some mistake them as shells). They can live up to 10 years, though the white, sun-bleached ones you find on the beach are dead. Definitely leave behind the darker colored ones with furry, spiny cilia (they help the creatures move underwater). Those suckers are alive!

My kids cheered whenever we found one, argued constantly about who found the most and shed tears whenever one of their precious discoveries crumbled in their hands. The fragility of the sand dollar adds to the allure of collecting them.

It might be corny to say, but watching my kids engage in something I found special about my childhood shot me with an undeniable rush of what people call, “the feels.”

In contrast, my kids don’t know much about agates, and I don’t remember enough of my cousin's ravings to convince them of an agate’s superiority to other rocks. Agates also seem to be much more elusive out in the wild, so we’re not wasting our time with that endeavor. Anyway, my kids already have rock obsessions, independent of my influence.

Yes, my kids are “cool rock” collectors, meaning they collect anything with a distinguishable shape or color that can fit into a pocket (usually MY pocket, scratching against my phone screen).

Now, an average adult might look at one of my kids’ rock collections and say, “these all look the same.” That adult would be correct. They’re just regular rocks, many of which you find wholesale at the home improvement/gardening store of your choice.

To my kids, and I suspect many others, individual rocks are special in ways that can’t be distinguished by adult eyes. And so, in addition to searching for shells and sand dollars, my kids spent much of our vacation hunting for special rocks. The novelty at the ocean and in Puget Sound, however, seemed to be how the rocks appeared when doused with seawater. Those grayish red and grayish green rocks look a little more red and green underwater, and so we came home from vacation with several zipper-lock plastic bags of “special rocks.” Apologies for the excessive use of plastic, Mother Nature.

When unpacking the car after returning home, I noticed these special rocks didn’t look much different from the ones they already had in their collections. Dry them off and, well, rocks from the ocean looked like rocks from landlocked North Idaho.

My kids didn’t see them that way. All four pretty much said the same thing when they retrieved their bags after vacation:

“Oh awesome! I remember where I got this one and this one. And, ooh, remember this one? This one is my favorite! No, actually this one!”

So their ocean rocks will join the piles of Inland Northwest rocks in their rooms, and I won’t be able to tell the difference. That’s OK. They aren’t my special rocks.

I do, however, have many, many memories of watching my kids excitedly hunt for these random, anonymous rocks. Those memories have varied backdrops — the ocean, the Puget Sound, the Spokane River, Lake Coeur d’Alene, the park near our old house, the streets of our current neighborhood and even our own driveway. So, even to me, I guess they’re special rocks.

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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer and stay-at-home dad to four kids, ages 5-11. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.