Beach Treasures

She is full of surprises, my gray-haired friend. Our lunch date turns into an unexpected drive to the headlands, with folding chairs in tow. Her brown paper bag holds sandwiches and chips . . . and plastic baggies and plates for gathering gemstones. She shows me how to scoop up the coarsest sand from along the tide line and swirl it in the plate, winnowing small treasures from the sea. Perhaps it is the crashing surf and seagull cries, the stuff of New Age music, that brings to mind her hippie days. Remembrances of "catching" babies—dozens of them. I am astonished. "Girls wanted to have their babies at home," she says. "I was good at it. I could turn them with my hands."