Finding A Marble Saved Me From Losing Mine
By Erin McAward
Beautiful aquamarine sea marble (Erin McAward).
If you’re a beachcomber or mudlark, discovering a perfectly weathered marble is a “bucket list” moment. Rich in history and nostalgia, marbles remind us of the joys of simpler times. Many lifelong mudlarks never find one, yet others seem to find enough for everyone. Regardless of how many you’ve encountered, for most combers, finding a marble is like reaching the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
Sea marble (Kirsti Scott).
After searching for sea glass for over 20 years, I was lucky enough to find my first marble in the summer of 2023. I’d been fortunate to have found other rarities—red glass, an intact blue bottle stopper, a completely smooth wine bottle neck with cork somehow still inside—but a marble had gone unchecked on my scavenger hunt list until then. Ironically, this was around the same time that I was feeling as though I had lost my own marbles due to a crippling bout of anxiety.
Storm clouds and rough waves at Silver Sands State Park in Milford, Connecticut (LBSimms Photography/Shutterstock.com).
2023 was one of the most difficult years of my life. I lived in a city that didn’t feel like home, left a job that had felt like home, and couldn’t shake the lingering terror that the long-term effects of having COVID had instilled (literally) deep in my bones. I found it difficult to do anything I enjoyed, even walking my favorite beaches. One afternoon in June, about a week after my first-ever panic attack, so severe it caused temporary paralysis in my face and hands, I decided to go to the water. At the time, this felt like going against my better judgment, like the mental equivalent of jumping out of a plane. Within two minutes of arriving at the shoreline, I spotted a gorgeous aquamarine marble. Finally.
Inspired by my quick success, I ventured too far outside the confines of my ever-shrinking comfort zone. The rhythmic sounds of the small waves crashing, which usually calmed me, became menacingly hypnotic. My legs began to feel unstable and gelatinous like the Portuguese man o’ war I’d seen washed up while combing the coast of South Florida earlier that year. I felt panicked, dizzy, and, most of all, furious that anxiety had stolen this moment from me.
Later on, I sat at home, still overcome with the inescapable feeling that everything was all wrong. In an effort to salvage the day, I took the marble out of my pocket and opened up the photos I’d taken of it with my phone at the beach against the blue water. Despite how lost I was, I felt accomplished. Not just because I’d secured one of my glass-hunting white whales, but because I’d pushed myself to do something that had felt impossible just days before, and I’d been rewarded for it. Even if the trip hadn’t ended as I’d liked it to, I had looked fear in the eye and confronted it.
In the sunlight, the marble’s swirling surface, smoothed and tide-worn, appears almost holographic. As it’s said, recovering from anxiety isn’t linear. It’s wavy, like the inside of a cat’s eye marble or the swells of the ocean. Not every day is going to be perfect, but any day spent by the water looking for life’s little treasures is worthy of gratitude and celebration.
This article appeared in Beachcombing Magazine Volume 43 July/August 2024.
