Blue Beads

I remember….
Ten minutes.
Go.

I remember the blue cut glass antique Austrian bead necklace breaking just as I crested the bridge on 10th Street over Fortification Creek in Craig. I felt the release, like a kiss on my collarbone; then the beads began moving in all directions. I felt them fall against my skin and slide across my chest, cool, like a kiss. I remember that I stopped the bicycle because, of course, I was riding my bicycle, and picked up as many beads as possible. Bright, shiny blue against the gray asphalt. I probably missed a few, but it was fun to hunt for them.

I remember the time the red cut glass antique Austrian bead necklace broke as I was exiting a metro bus on 15th Street in Denver. In front of the Woolworths there on the corner. I loved that store. The classic epitome of a big city drug store was like. With the smell of people and popcorn, hot streets, sweat, rain, cheap perfume. I grabbed for my the beads sliding across my chest, hot under a sweater. I didn’t’ find as many but I saved some.

Then, I remember riding a metro bus with three small children, a thin woman with three little boys, one just a wee babe in arms. He fussed; she raised her blouse and tucked him into her breast with a loose cloth for modesty. She held on to that nursing baby and to the overhead bar while admonishing the other two little boys to stop fooling around, hang on, don’t tease your brother, etc. that litany of mother-talk.