Angela Once Said That Parenting is Immersive

We are paddling in a splash of children when Sarah holds up a wet stone, it’s the shape of a breast: symbol of my parenting life she says. The sphere was the tint and opacity of cold, stewed tea: the thing was tannin strong. It’s not hot-swollen nor punctured flat but the size of a small, clenched fist, perfectly hard and round except drawn to a neat bifurcated pout. It’s even got a cracked nipple, I point out. In the cliff car park by the gritty toilets with no mirrors, on a What did you find today? ID board, a mammoth tooth, anemone fossil and there, unmistakable, her stone, named as cannon shot flint— a cup of boiling quartz cooled to indestructible grace.