Leaving Our Mark

We met my son, his wife, and my little grandson last weekend, and while we were out walking I snapped this picture. Some brave, (talk about precarious), ambitious soul, decided to take the rocks on the jetty and manipulate them into a manmade sculpture, of sorts. I see these stacks of rocks everywhere. There are many examples along highway 38, which leads to Forest Falls and the back way up the mountain to Big Bear Lake. Huge stacks of rocks.

People have, and always will be, compelled to add their two cents into the mix. We can’t just go out in nature and leave well enough alone. Now, I admit the stacking of rocks, or the gathering of twigs and fashioning them into representations of witches and such isn’t necessarily destructive, not like littering or removing materials from pristine environments. It would seem; us human beings are keen to leave our mark.

I’m no different. Putting aside, (but never discounting), the hugest, most meaningful mark I’ve left on this planet, creating five human beings, (mind you, with the help of The Husband—his seed responsible for 3 precious children, and an unnamed sperm donor—his seed responsible for 2 precious children.) As we drive through different towns here in Southern California I’ll say to The Husband, or my kids, or whoever else might be stuck in the car with me, “Look, there’s the pool table store I designed.”

Passing through Beverly Hills, I cry out, while pointing to the hills dotted with grand houses, “I once bid on a project up there that was designed to house four complete kitchens! And ten bathrooms! Can you imagine needing four kitchens in one dwelling? One of them was to be in a pool pavilion. I didn’t get the job though, lost out to a conglomerate.”

One day, we exited the freeway, searching for a place to go to the bathroom, and ended up in a seedy part of town, “Oh my,” I said, “I’ve been here before. I sold a kitchen to a truck driver and his wife in that neighborhood right over there. The place was a disaster area. My briefcase got hopelessly stuck to the table; it was so sticky. And live wires hung from the ceiling. They had four little boys. The cutest boys you ever saw, stair steps from about age two to eight or nine.” I sighed, thinking of the woman who had claimed that she was going to be a better housekeeper, once the new kitchen was finished. But, we had to return two weeks after the job was completed, to install a range hood that had been on back order, and the new kitchen was well on it’s way to resembling the former, only the cabinet doors were still clinging to their hinges and bare wires weren’t hanging from the ceiling, yet.

My big dream is not only to have books I’ve penned sitting on the bookshelves at the bookstore, but to walk into a public library and find those same books available for some special someone to check out, for free. As a child I got a head rush whenever I brought home a stack of books from the library without being required to spend a red penny. The process always seemed miraculous to me. What a gift!

How do you intend to leave your mark? Or have you already left so many marks you've quit counting?


All Rights Reserved. © 2009 by Elizabeth Bradley.