dad, on the rocks

I was on the phone with my dad, chatting about this and that, and next thing I knew, we were talking about his rock balancing.

Oh, yeah. Dad knows how to balance rocks.

You know, like this:

(This is from the UK — not my dad’s work, but similar.)

For his work, my dad balances the fairly large rocks in my parents’ rather forested front yard. He balances rocks around their waterfall. He balances rocks around the pool. Anywhere. Everywhere. And I mean everywhere. He’s balanced rocks in Canada and Europe while on choir tours. You know, spreading the joy of the Lord and working rock miracles. That, especially, gives him a kick. Hee hee. What will these Germans think when they come home and see these rocks balanced in their yard? Hee hee. So Dad’s an art vandal basically. I trespass on your property for a larger mystical purpose. Haha. He’s been casually doing this off and on for several years now.

I remember the first time I saw Dad’s rock balancing. I was driving to my parents’ for a visit, pulling into the long driveway, and suddenly, there were mysterious rock shrines everywhere, rising out of nowhere. Small stone sentinels lining the drive. I was gobsmacked. Am I in Middle Earth? Did Hobbits do this? Nope. Just dad. Doing stuff. And they weren’t simply stacked. Oh, no. They were improbably, impossibly balanced, tip to tip. I almost drove off the road from staring, openmouthed; it was so incredible, so completely out of the blue. For a fleeting moment, I lost all sense of where I even was. I was in some kind of fantasy. Some science fiction, right? Somehow, I’d driven through a porthole into an alternate universe with a freaky gravity-defying landscape.

When asked about it, Dad was typically nonchalant:

“I dunno. I just figured out how to do it.”

“Dad, that’s pretty amazing.”

“Well. It’s fun.”

Yo dee doh. No big deal.

Of course, the grandkids went nuts. The boys, especially. “WOW! Pop-pop did THAT?? We want to do it too!!” Turns out, little boys don’t have the mental focus and patience to be a zen rock master. In the end, they were sidelined, left only with little piles of unruly rocks and bug-eyed admiration of their Pop-pop’s prowess.

So when our recent conversation turned to rock balancing, I had to finally ask him, “Dad, how did you ever start doing that?”

See, you can never ask Dad what animates him at the time. He’ll hedge. He’ll be mysterious. He might not know yet. Ask him later; then he’ll tell you. He needs time to figure out why he does stuff. Sometimes he never knows.

“Well, I saw a big display of balanced rocks down at The Embarcadero years ago. There was a sign there that said this guy was one of 5 in the world who could do it. So I thought I would try it. It worked out okay. I guess I’m the 6th.”

I laughed.

“It’s just physics,” he said.

I laughed again. “How come you don’t do it much anymore?”

“Oh. Well. Because I’ve mastered it, I guess.”

I could hear the simple shrug in his voice. He’s just that way. We said goodbye moments later and I had to smile, thinking about Dad and his rocks.

Yes, you’ve mastered it, Dad. You’re the 6th.

You’re much more than the 6th.