Keep 10

A few years ago while camping at the beach, one of my brothers introduced us all to a game he called Keep 10. The game is that as you walk along the shoreline, you pick up beautiful beach stones that catch your eye. For the duration of the game, you keep walking and you keep picking up stones, but there's a catch. You can only keep ten. After a period of time you gather 'round with all your fellow players and compare your ten. Sounds easy, right? Maybe even a bit boring. But we were camping and only interested in hanging out on the beach anyway, so several of us decided to play.

We headed down the beach in a line, all eyes cast down, scanning. In very short order we were spread out all across the sand, hunched over and zoned in. Soon cries of "oh, no...but I want to KEEP this one!" were heard from up in the dunes and down at the water's edge. Someone would exclaim "Oooo...I LOVE this one; that's no contest" and a hapless rock would be tossed into the water - one that had been chosen out of thousands just a moment before. After awhile, if you had been watching us, you would have seen hands surreptitiously sneaking into pockets, and beach coverups being modified into pouches that sagged lower and lower as we walked farther and farther away from our encampment. It was apparent pretty quickly that this game wasn't half as easy as it sounded. When my brother called "timesup!" nobody had just ten. We all had ten in our hand like we were supposed to - but all of us had our pockets (guys) and coverups (girls) full of another 10 or 20 at least -beautiful rocks that once discovered, we just couldn't give up.

After a lot of laughs and commiserating about how hard it was to only keep ten, we began to share our collections. After 20 or 30 minutes of intense concentration searching for our perfect stone; for me deep red stones, it was amazing to all of us to lift our heads and see everyone else's collecting criteria. My son had collected flat gray stones, as perfectly round as he could find and breath-takingly thin. My husband had a collection that didn't seem to be connected at all, until he explained he was looking for texture. "Here, see? feel this one!" My sister had a handful of black and boring-looking stones, until she dipped her hand in the water's edge and lifted it out to show us dark green-blue jewels. Someone else had collected only beach glass, and another fossils. I was so surprised at everyone's widely different criteria and their enthusiasm at both explaining it and showing their prize finds to the rest of us. It was enlightening. Beauty truly has no definition.

These days I am considering adding another stone to my collection - I want to in the worst way - but my right hand is full. So which one to toss in favour of this one? These in my right hand were chosen just as carefully as this one...I roll it around in my left hand for awhile, relishing its soft corners and smooth firm feel, its comforting weight. I open my right hand and take a peek at all these I don't want to let go. How to choose? None of them have become ugly or look like a mistake. How can I decide that one is more beautiful than another? I try to add the new one carefully, but my fingers can't close over them now, and I will drop them all. So I am rolling this new choice over and over in my left, and looking at all my beautiful, familiar, much-loved choices in my right. Do I dare? Can I let one go?