Amber

When I got engaged, my fiancé asked me with a delicate amber ring: four silver prongs, one amber stone, one finger, one yes. I wore the ring as if it were my sister; older, better-traveled, worn. I have always loved amber, its light intensity, its multi-yellowed, aged faces.  I nearly lost her on the brink of a city sewer grate; the stone slipped right out of its setting; I banged my hand on the car door, it was dawn and so early, and there she went, flickering like a gem on fire. Finally, on my knees, I crouched almost on top of her, plucked her between my fingers. I brought her back to Dan, crying these big wet tears, fluid as her sap in the prongs.

Stone

I come from a family that is bound by stone. I protested when the creek bed in my parents' front lawn eroded and was filled in by musky sod. I nested, in a tie-string satin bag, heaps of shiny rocks, an arrowhead from the creek, stones from our driveway before it was paved. I always wanted to remember it as it was: cold, hard, stone; something that could not be changed.Ore and lava rocks, my dad brought these back from trips. They were changeable, malleable. They were never as worthy to me; they always held the combustible potential to change shape, and melt, stick together, become even more porous. Some of the rocks my dad brought back from Europe were so full of holes, I wondered where he'd been. I collected stones. I loved exposed mountain rock, the click of pebbles against the road, cascading in small avalanches.

Live Free or Die: New Hampshire

When I visit my grandmother, New England seeps into my pores, trails sap and rainwater down my fragile teenage cheeks, douses me with fresh wet spring air. I can almost trace my fingerprints against the rock face before her log cabin; I can almost see my footprints. The atmosphere is rock and chance; the grass on the mountains here is moss. We walk to the road to get her mail; by mid-morning, the fog will lift, and the temperature will rise with my polio-stricken grandfather. He will put on a black and red flannel, stuff a doughnut into his steepled mouth, a black triangle of want, and ignore the mountains behind him. He will face the day with passivity reserved for the handicapped, and his brace will start to eat into his smaller leg. The steel is stronger than the denim pant leg; the steel is stronger than the sedimentary rocks facing him, winding his day down early with silver shadows. Each night, I empty my pockets at the guest bedside table: occasionally, I see an igneous stone and put it off to the side.

Cubic Zirconium

My father brought home a cubic zirconium for me: it was pink and mounted on a gold-painted setting. He was sober when he bought it. He was happy; his face was bright. My mother watched me pin back the crystal box top, thinking it was a diamond, something pilfered from a mine. I jammed it onto my ring finger; he kissed my delicate cheek. It shone underneath our chandelier in the dining room; it was a stone that was a mineral that wasn't a diamond that was mine. I loved it. At night, I asked it questions about the rocks it lived with, about the size of stones it was cut from, about the factory where all the pink zirconium met. In it, synthetics and oxidation, processes made by man. In it, my life history: an only child, two parents, one drunk, one sober, one pink, one white. My father was pink because of his cheeks; my mother was white because she was pure.

Asphalt

When I am ten years old, my parents decide it’s time to pave the driveway. I have taken to the rocks sloped downhill toward the small cul-de-sac’s road, have stored a few of the shiniest white-grey rocks away in my dresser. When the time comes, my dad takes the day off of work and has a crew pour the man-made tar across the freshly raked surface; all the rocks have been piled in a long truck bed. I give each rock a name, and they share one emotion, an echo of the loneliness they feel when they pull away. The hydrogen-carbon mixture settles on the drive in black; a soft breeze settles upon it, and nothing moves. The wind tries puddling air on the top, but only a few stray shards of cut grass from the neighbor’s front lawn glide past and stick. It looks like a painting, a subtle trick of the eye. That night, I lament the rocks and consider stepping into the sticky, unified substance, but think better of it. I don’t want to wake my dad; I do not want to get into trouble sneaking out to leave footprints on the night.

Amethyst

Of all the stones to be assigned for a birthstone, this one is purple. When my friend and I, in the fifth grade, attend a field trip to a history museum, we sneak off during a lesson on corn husking and find the gift store. It’s full of wooden bins stocked with colorful birthstones: Amy’s is January, which is a bright, magenta heart of a stone; the black cursive name underneath its bin is simply Garnet. April is full of shiny rock crystal, as good and cleanly clear as rock candy on a string. May, the time of year when everything blooms, is endearingly Emerald; this one gleams off the charts. And I am captivated by July, the name of Ruby so elegant and red. There is June’s Pearl, which my mother wears on her right ring finger, and September’s autumnal Sapphire, an emboldened way to release fall into the air, escaping from summer, and of course, Topaz, which I think is amber but is really November’s own stone, not amber in the least. December is labeled Turquoise, and I hold a human-heart-shaped piece in my palm; when we are caught by the room mother, she finds me tracing the fine black lines of the turquoise stone, wondering what worlds it has already seen. As we leave, I catch a brief glance of February’s Amethyst, a clear, purple stone cut into hard points, diamond-shaped and gaudy. I have never seen an amethyst ring and wonder why I have never known this was my stone.

Amber

The second time I lose my amber engagement stone, Dan and I are in a heated fight about a coworker of his, one whom I am convinced, after two bottles of wine, wants to sleep with him. “Why is she always in your office?” I scream at him, my lungs wide open, and I swing around to face him. As I do, my left hand caustically hits a low, oaky kitchen cupboard, hard, and amber goes flying. Soon, I am on my knees, looking. “Fuck,” I say as Dan gets on the ground. “Sam,” he says, “it’s got to be here.” We look for what seems like forever. His hands span the dirty tiles, cover bread crumbs from dinner. I spy the stone on its back, the glue from the setting exposed on its underbelly; it’s sitting against a stool leg on the carpet far away. I grab it, and we both stand. “I am so sorry,” I say, and we stare at each other. We have just moved to Kansas; it’s pouring outside. The wind is fierce, and I am constantly afraid of a tornado knocking us clear away. I take the amber stone, look at it once, and jam it back in its setting. “There,” I say, proud. Dan’s face is ashen. “It’s fine,” I say, climbing onto a stool, pouring myself some wine.

Shale

In Kansas, there are no naturally occurring lakes; all the ones we know of are man-made and have snakes crawling in them. In the newspaper, to mark the end of August, a family went boating at Clinton Lake, near us, and discovered that as they puttered along, a snake had slithered upside the motorboat and settled in the back of the boat. The child watched this happen. I pointed to Dan, made him read the story. “Let’s go,” I said.

           Clinton Lake is complicated; from one embankment, we can see a marina, a yacht club, sailboats docked and swaying in the wind. We have hiked a completely flat trail, our feet plundering over what appeared to be burnt, sun-exhausted grass. The trail led us to the edge of the muddy lake, which is brown and barely lapping with waves. We hike along the ridge, watching for fish, and see none. Dan is, I know, precariously watching for snakes. I crouch against a tiny rock embankment further down. The rock face here is a soft, cottony orange, almost a brash yellow. The stone rubs off on the tips of my fingers and crumbles when I pick it up. Its layers are thin and like pie crust; they break easily. On our way home, I stuff a longer rock into my pocket, and inside, I place it on the kitchen floor for our cats to sniff. One puts his pink nose on the stone, and orange power rubs off on it, and he sneezes. We laugh, and he runs away. The rock, my Kansas first, is dangerous; its layered approach to sustainability makes me nervous, as if we have moved to a place where everything can be taken apart, as if anything I want to accomplish might turn to dust and burnt powder in my own two hands.

Bauxite

After my parents got divorced, Dan and I moved into our apartment in Kansas, married only two weeks, and my father turned to bauxite. He became an old, grey weathered rock, shifting into aluminum as he took a factory job working nights, from 5:00 – 1:00 in the morning. He began to send me emails at 1:34 in the morning, and I could see the earth weathering him. Contained in him: my frustration at having an alcoholic father, the gifts he gave me when I was a child, the love my mother lost for him. All of it is this rough gray matter; a cemented frailty, unknockable. He has begun sending cards to me in the mail in bunches; they are all cards I wrote to him when I was a teenager, when I was seven, when I loved him more, with less bauxite building up and compounding him into one long rock. He asks for the cards back, and Dan tells me to keep them, to cherish what I used to feel for my father to help me understand how things have changed. Every night that he calls, it is on his dinner break, at 9:00, and I can hear change machines, vended goods, in the wide hallways behind him. I think he is turning into a form of aluminum, something tin, more malleable, made into a ball and thrown.

Aluminum Foil

My favorite food was a baked potato when I was growing up, as if to indicate my high level of anxiety, as baked potatoes are supposedly as soothing as placing your toes across hot ore. My mom would wrap aluminum foil around three baking potatoes in the oven, and after about an hour, she would tong them, place them on our plates, and they would steam with heat. I always fully removed mine from its foil wrapping and set the foil on the side of my plate. At the end of dinner, as my mom and I cleared the table while my dad sat back and watched, he wadded up my foil into a ball. He and I would then get on our knees at one end of the narrow kitchen and roll the ball as far as we could to get to the other side. On good days, he would mold his own, too, and we would race. On bad days, he would sit at the table, alone, drinking the rest of his vodka and orange soda, watching passively as our dog barked and yipped along the tiles, racing after the metallic ball. Made from aluminum ore and bauxite, the ball would stumble unevenly, often stopping before it reached the carpeted living room.