| Sunny Side Up June16, 2004 �2003 Kathleen Gibson A marble to remember Dad's love There's a marble in a box on my dresser. A plain blue glass cob with tiny bubbles frozen inside. I don't know how old I was when Dad gave me the marble. Too young to count, maybe. I don't remember where we were. And he never told me why he gave it to me. I just know it's from him. I know it the same way I know my own hand, or recognize one of my children in a crowd. For over forty years that marble has stayed in my possession. It sticks to me as though it were attached. Other things far more precious have been lost, but that cheap ball of chipped glass has survived all my sortings and siftings: one marriage, two children, seven subsequent moves back and forth across five provinces. For the last dozen years or so, the cob has been in the same flowered bandbox. Before that it was in a black tin piggy bank that held a few of my mother's childhood trinkets. Miniscule horn buds from a baby calf. Beads. A coin or two, I think. I haven't looked in that box for a while, and I've forgotten. But the marble is stubborn. It will not be forgotten. I happen onto it at the most surprising times, when I'm looking for something else, usually. It always startles me. You, I say, amazed. As though I don't know they commit people for things less strange than talking to a walnut sized glass orb. Why have you stayed in my life for so long, and what's to become of you? Who will know, when I'm gone, why you're hanging around? Sometimes I pick up the marble and hold it to one eye. There's another world in there, a twilight world. I'm a child at my father's side, holding my father's hand, stepping large to match his stride. It's the middle of the night. We're on our way to the campsite washroom and the only thing I'm not afraid of in the velvet dark is the feel of my hand in his, and the sound of our footsteps crunching on the gravel. The night terrified me. I wonder if that's why Dad gave me the kind twilight marble. I phone him. He remembers the cob. But when I ask him he says, "I don't know why I gave it to you. I just wanted to give you something." I press him, but there's nothing more. The blue marble will keep its secrets then, I think - things it can't tell even me. Me, who loves it best! When I hold it up to the light and see the stars, I'm content with the mystery. But when I roll its cool smoothness over my palm, I feel my father's hand in mine and know. As we say good-bye, my father suddenly says this surprising thing: "Kathleen, I love you more than that marble can tell." I wish every grown child a marble - to remember. You can respond to this column at [email protected] |
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