I’ve started decorating for the holidays, dragging out boxes of decorations that I’ve hauled around for decades. Every year I cull a few things I’ve saved but never use. Among them is a crèche set that I bought to celebrate my first married Christmas. Not wanting to spend my first major holiday alone, I’d followed Mr. Oliver’s ship to Barcelona, Spain with Denny, another officer’s wife. The plan was to meet the guys in Madrid, but no young lieutenants greeted us when the plane landed, so we went on to Barcelona alone. There, we discovered that the USS Pharris, FF1094, had never made it to port. 

No one at the base knew the ship’s whereabouts or could estimate a new time of arrival. So, we booked two rooms in the same hotel and spent the next three days getting to know this historic city, primarily walking the route from our hotel down to the dock to inquire about the ship, but day after day, there was still no hint of what had become of it. On Christmas Eve afternoon, restless and a little lost, I headed out into the city alone. 

Barcelona at Christmas was a wonderland of glittering lights, open-air markets selling fresh-cut greens, garlands hung from ancient balconies on winding backstreets, and sparkling trees gracing wide avenues. Garlands even festooned the rear windows of taxis while Felice Navidad played from inside the cabs. Barely 22, barely out of school, barely married, and in a foreign city at Christmas, I walked, longing for some sense of connection. 

I found the creche set on a little crooked side street shop near Cathedral Square. The figures were made of painted pottery, an upgrade from the plastic set of my youth. So I bought baby Jesus in his manger, Mary seated on a hay bale, a standing Joseph, one hefty angel down on one knee, and two cows. No stable. I’d have to figure out housing on my own.  

As I left the shop, I heard faint strains of ethereal music that seemed to come from a flute or panpipe and drum — an ancient carol, a haunting, lyrical melody that drew me down alleys and byways to find its source. I continued to follow the beat of a drum and the song of a flute until turning the corner into Cathedral Square, I was startled to see 12 businessmen, mothers, grandfathers, and passersby, had laid down shopping bags, purses, and briefcases to form a circle in front of the church. Hands joined and raised, moving in silence, they stepped side to side in an ancient circle dance, and now I could see they were accompanied by flute, oboe, trumpet, and drum. It was as if I’d crossed through a portal into the 17th century. They moved soberly, with intent, apparent strangers— as if dancing at a royal court or in a Catalonian wood. 

As the bustle of Christmas shoppers and tourists streamed around them, it was like glimpsing a shooting star or a deer in the woods; something unexpected, existing only for a moment, happened upon only by chance. I watched, mesmerized, as they danced until they broke the circle with quiet smiles, picked up discarded purses and packages without a word, and melted back into the crowd. 

I stopped at an outdoor holiday market, bought a small Christmas tree, and returned to my hotel room deeply moved, as if I’d witnessed a crack in creation or the physical manifestation of a prayer.

But looking at the creche set now, resting chipped in a box marked fragile, I have to admit I have rarely used it. My parents had a creche, so I thought I should have a creche, not yet really knowing who I was. Now, I know I’m not really a creche-set person, but I can’t dispose of Jesus! Not knowing what to do with him is related to why there are 16 accumulated Bibles in the basement. I put him back in the box. 

As the day wore on that Christmas Eve, and the ship had still not appeared, I decided to make one last effort to find it. Together, Denny and I called the US Consulate in Madrid. Identifying ourselves as Navy wives attached to the Pharris, we were finally informed that the ship had been delayed by an unexpected engagement with a Russian sub. Communication had been impossible, but the ship was now enroute and would dock that evening next to DD 837, the USS Sarsfield. 

Relieved and excited, Denny and I made our way down to the harbor and were soon invited aboard the Sarsfield to await the ship’s arrival. Grateful after standing around on the cold concrete piers in leather boots and long winter coats, we chatted in the wardroom until we were called to the Bridge to see the USS Pharris pulling up alongside at last. 

With the Captain of the Sarsfield, we watched the Pharris attempt to dock, but designed with only one propeller, the ship was having difficulty backing into her berth. The maneuver was tricky or the Officer of the Deck young—but as the minutes dragged on with no way to connect the ships to each other or the Pharris to the pier, it became increasingly frustrating. The ships were only separated by a few feet, but it might as well have been the entire Mediterranean Sea. Suddenly, the Captain turned to us and said, “This is ridiculous. We’ll hand you across.”

And so, with complete trust that we would not be dropped into the water between the ships and with our husbands at their stations unaware—we were literally handed from sailors on the Sarsfield over the water into the hands of sailors on the Pharris. 

So, my first Christmas as an adult, out in the world on my own, my first married Christmas, was not spent alone. It was spent in Barcelona, Spain, where strangers danced and kindness reigned. 

So much has changed in my life since that night. Where is the Captain of the Sarsfield now, I wonder? Where are the enlisted guys who stopped what they were doing to hand us safely over Mediterranean waves? Where are all the acts of kindness we perform?

Every act of compassion surely leaves an imprint on the universe, an energy signature that may dissipate but cannot disappear. Maybe someday we’ll discover kindness is the mysterious force that entangles us—that forever connects you and me—which is why we have never really been separate, why we have never really danced alone.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

The future is influenced by what you remember. 

It is decided by what you believe.

I have a story to tell you. 

In 1944, as Allied forces stormed the beaches in southern Italy, Dr. Henry Beecher, a graduate of Harvard Medical School and Chief of Anesthesiology at Massachusetts General, was serving at a military base hospital. Overwhelming casualties had depleted medical supplies. When Dr. Beecher realized there was no morphine left to anesthetize a soldier before a surgical procedure, he told the soldier he was injecting him with morphine but injected him with saline instead.  

To Dr. Beecher’s astonishment, the soldier relaxed exactly as if he’d received anesthesia and, more importantly, and significantly, withstood the procedure without any painkiller and without going into shock. 

While no written document verifies this anecdote, Dr. Beecher’s colleagues said it was mostly likely true as the facts that follow are well established. After the war, Dr. Beecher returned to Harvard intrigued by witnessing the power of the mind over the body and began researching the possibilities in earnest. In 1955, he published “The Powerful Placebo” in the Journal of the American Medical Association. He has been known as “the father of the placebo effect” ever since.  

Today, the majority of drugs that fail in late-stage trials, after Big Pharma has spent millions of dollars on their development, fail because they can’t beat the power of belief alone. Now the gold standard in drug testing, the placebo effect demonstrates a significant number of subjects will get well simply because they believe they are going to get well. 

So, it turns out that Rudyard Kipling was both prescient and correct when, in 1923, he said in a speech to the Royal College of Surgeons in London, “Words are the most powerful drug known to mankind. They enter into, and color, the minutest cells of the brain.” 

Words are so powerful they can affect you even on a subliminal level. In 1982, Dr. Lloyd Silverman, a New York research psychologist at the Veterans Administration Regional Office, ran a newspaper ad offering free desensitization for people with insect phobias. Twenty women responded. After dividing the women into two groups, Silverman exposed them to photos of roaches, bees, centipedes, and spiders. Using a tachistoscope, an instrument that flashes images or words across a subject’s visual field so quickly they are not consciously discernible, Silverman interspersed the photos in each group with a sentence flashed on the screen for 4 milliseconds. The control group subconsciously absorbed the totally neutral sentence, “People are walking.” Without knowing they had seen it, the experimental group had read, “Mommy and I are one.” 

The group subliminally absorbing the phrase “Mommy and I are one” had a significantly higher success rate at becoming desensitized. Later, researchers replicated the results, and Silverman found that the phrase “Mommy and I are one” also led to greater success with those quitting smoking and in weight loss programs. Apparently, feeling safe and protected is empowering and transforming. 

The power of words.

When my kids were young and became ill, instead of interpreting fever as a sign of illness, I told them it was a sign they were already getting well. “You have a fever?” I’d say, my cheek grazing a small, hot forehead. I’d sit down on the bed, surrounded by posters of rock groups and runners (Steve Prefontaine: “To do less than your best is to sacrifice the gift”), and say, “That’s actually good news! Your body has marshaled forces! Right this minute, it’s working to make you well. I’ll bet you’ll be fine by morning.” It often worked. And when it didn’t, we saw the pediatrician. But we placed our attention on health, not illness, and it seemed to have an effect. 

When I accidentally crack a kneecap on the pine coffee table by the fireplace, I tell myself the pain has already faded at the moment of injury. I sit down on the hearth, the crackling fire at my back, and I can feel the pain immediately dissipate. The brain is an expectation machine. It believes what you tell it, and it even interprets body language. 

When you smile, even for no reason, even just because you are holding a pencil between your teeth, your brain takes in the message that something good must be happening, and you feel better. 

Everything is story, and your brain has evolved to respond to it. When I began this column, I said I had a story to tell you and when you read those words, your brain released a small surge of endorphins in the belief intriguing information was on its way. So, I start every day with story. You could call it prayer as well. Either way, it is the power of words at work. 

After expressing my gratitude very specifically for the gifts of the day before and for the innumerable gifts of this life, like you, I offer up a story about the next 8 hours as if they have already happened. I am specific and positive; I work from a basis of good intention and goodwill. I write the story down. I write of editing 100 pages of a manuscript, getting across the Bay Bridge without delay, and having a laughter-filled lunch with a friend I love. I imagine healing sent to those deeply challenged at the moment, of a new client call in which we both hang up utterly delighted at the obvious potential in our collaboration. 

You get the idea. At least, I hope you do. I hope you experiment as well. I hope you use the power of words today. I am.

Smile. You are going to have a marvelous morning; you will accomplish all you hoped to accomplish and have a surprisingly delightful amount of time for sheer entertainment this afternoon. You will receive a flash of insight about a problem you’ve been harboring that releases all energy from it, and your unconditional joy will radiate from the inside out all day. You are, in fact, a magnet for miracles.

Don’t believe me? 

Sometimes, you can throw open the cell door, and the prisoner won’t budge. And sometimes, new ideas are met with resistance bordering on hostility. And to that, I say this: 

Mommy and I are one.   

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

This was harder than you might think. A few years ago, National Public Radio ran a series called “This I Believe.” Listeners were to submit 500-word essays sharing beliefs they held to be unequivocally true—anything from “I believe in ghosts” to “I believe in democracy.” The only rule was to include the phrase, “This I believe.” 

The response was overwhelming. I submitted one myself. It was about my daughter’s choice to join her high school cross-country team because students were required to have an athletic activity, and she was not an athlete. Cross Country was a no-fail sport. You competed only with yourself, a situation a lot like life, I imagine.

So, my submission was about learning to cheer for everyone—always. We are all attempting to at least place in the same event: a life of consequence lived with kindness. This I believe. 

The topic of what I believe has been on my mind since last week’s class in “Near Death Experiences,” in which we learned about the concept of the Life Review. People who have been resuscitated after being declared clinically dead report remarkably similar experiences across cultures.

I’m not talking about encountering a religious figure or a tunnel of light. I am talking about being greeted by a love of inexpressible depth. I’m talking about the near- universal first words of those revived being, “Why did you bring me back?” And another important commonality: no one dies alone. This I believe.

In my mother’s journals, some of which I read after she died, I found a sketch she’d drawn 50 years ago titled “Image of Death.” A prone stick figure reached up toward three stick figures hovering overhead——their arms extended in invitation. Dotted lines between the figures below and those above indicated an energy flowing between them. A rudimentary sun shone in the sky, one tree, flowers, and grass. 

All my life, I had tried to include my mother in every meaningful moment—every holiday, birthday, vacation, graduation, and school program- often at the expense of my own family. Because she had been alone since the age of 42, I was determined being alone should not mean feeling alone, but death is an outlier. 

It was the week after Christmas; I was working and had a house full of family, guests, meals to make, and a kitchen to clean. I was at my desk trying to finish a manuscript when my mother’s assisted living facility called to say it was time to bring in hospice. Having just visited with Mom up, dressed, and talking days earlier, I was taken by surprise. I thought this meant she might die within 3 months, and I was overwhelmed at the very word. Hospice. I suddenly couldn’t speak. 

But Mom didn’t die within three months. She died within 3 days. 

On what would be her last day, I spent the afternoon in her room, just the two of us. Her bed had been lowered nearly to the floor, so I sat on the carpet next to her. She was unconscious, the room dimly lit, with soft classical music playing. I picked up a book of her published poetry titled A Fine Thin Thread. Since she once wrote, “My poetry is me, inside out,” I thought I’d read to her. 

As I read, I realized I was recalling in exquisite imagery, every relationship, hope, loss, longing, and love she had ever had. I was, in essence, reading a life review.  

That’s another commonality of near-death experiences. You are able to review your life with a compassionate understanding and lack of judgment we are incapable of here. 

After a few hours, I became anxious about the holiday company I’d left sitting at home. My youngest was visiting with a new boyfriend. I’d need to help get dinner started. I’d need not be a big drag. So, I texted home, asked if I should stop at the grocery store for coffee and more eggs, then told Mom, “I’ll see you tomorrow” because, in my inexperience, I fully believed I would. 

At the threshold, I suddenly stopped and turned back, intuitively unwilling to part quite so casually. I went back in, kissed her, and told her something much different. Something about how there would never be a day in my life I didn’t want her to stay and about what I imagined was waiting for her if she chose to go. Hospice was scheduled to come explain their program to us the following week. 

Just before midnight, the night nurse called to say, ‘Come as fast as you can! Your mother is actively dying.” I was the only local daughter, the only one whose name and number they had used countless times over the last decade for every emergency, but inexplicably, when every second counted, they had not called me first. They had called my sister–the only daughter of three who lives out of state. The only one who could not possibly get there in time, which delayed telling me.  

I’d just gotten in bed—so I threw on jeans and a sweater, and we drove back as fast as possible. Christmas lights and stoplights lit the darkness. Within 15 minutes, we were at the facility, but it was nearly midnight, and the doors were locked. We beat on them, rang the bell, and called on cell phones as time dragged on until finally, a lackadaisical security guard came strolling through the lobby and let us in. 

I raced up to the second floor—on the mission of a lifetime—to not let my mother die alone—only to be greeted by a staff member ten feet outside her door, framed by fake tinsel and a string of lights. “She’s gone,” she said. “Your mother died a few minutes ago.” I was stunned. She didn’t say ‘oops’ or ‘my bad,’ but might as well have. 

Had a trio of angels arrived? I’d spent my entire life making sure Mom wasn’t alone for important occasions—once even leaving a New Year’s Eve party with my new boyfriend unkissed at midnight to race the clock home—and here I’d missed the biggest transition to something new any of us ever encounter. 

I went into the quiet room I’d left only hours earlier. My mother was lying on the bed just as I’d left her. But she wasn’t there. 

I have since told myself she knew we were coming and chose to die with the same independence with which she had lived. But it’s hard to forgive myself for being so clueless. For not understanding the significance of what was happening that afternoon. For honoring the wrong priorities. 

I anticipate having a hard time explaining this in my own life review, so I’m telling you. 

But sometimes, I think the indifferent security guard was part of a plan. And the nurse who waited too long and then called the out-of-state daughter was part of a plan. And maybe three angels hovering overhead heard my footsteps on the stairs and whispered, the love that’s approaching can’t compare to the love that is waiting. And with joyous anticipation, she just let go.

A belief is not, by definition, a truth. It’s just a thought you’ve had for a long time. So, although I can’t be sure, and this theory cannot be verified, this I choose to believe.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here. 

At last summer’s Renaissance Festival, an appealing young man talked me into taking off my shoe after asking me to sit with him on a fragrant bed of pine needles near the Shakespeare stage. He seemed to be one of the actors or artisans who worked there. He gazed deeply into my eyes and said he wanted to read my sole. That was his thing, apparently, like fortune tellers read palms. Only I heard “soul,” and off came the shoe.

There was nothing like this at yesterday’s fall festival, but there were other attractions. We rode in a hay wagon dodging honeybees, ate funnel cake, and listened to an informed and entertaining reptile expert’s presentation on cobras, anacondas, milk snakes and alligators—all of which he held in his hands to the squeamish delight of rapt spectators.

Did you know that only venomous snakes have fangs? The others just have tiny teeth—he claims they feel like kittens when they bite. He says when a snake’s tongue strikes you, it tickles. He weaves slowly back and forth like a snake himself as he speaks. He’s about 60 with a dark beard and receding hairline. He’s wearing cargo shorts that are a little too short, clunky boots, and a collared shirt with a navy sweater. A little like an American Steve Irwin. With loving tenderness, he pushes up his sleeves and allows various reptiles to coil around his arms. We watch from a safe distance on haybales.

His snakes have names. And relationships. The brilliantly orange-and-yellow-banded milk snake is “Lipstick.” She is remarkably beautiful. Twelve-inch coral bands are separated by yellow and black bands about two inches wide. Her offspring is “Mini Lipstick,” and her tiny granddaughter is “Chapstick.” 

Chapstick was so small when she was born, she could curl in a bottlecap. Apparently, that was not appalling. He recounts watching an anaconda eat a goat. The crowd leans in, horrified and attracted in spite of themselves, like involuntarily slowing at the scene of an accident. He’s a fan of all things reptile and eager to share the love.

So. I’ll just say it. 

I’ve killed an inordinate number of snakes in my life, and now I feel bad about it.

When my sisters and I were little, we routinely killed water snakes as they swam out of the marsh for the river. Mindlessly. Just because they were snakes. Our means of destruction? Oars. Our parents probably didn’t know about it, but our father told us that if one of us was bitten by a snake, her companion should cut the bite with a knife and suck out the venom. 

Prepare to die, I thought, looking at my sister’s leg.

I feel terrible about this senselessness now, not just because of the snake man. These days, I open windows in January to let spiders out, carry centipedes out of the basement, ferry flies down three flights of stairs to the front door, never ever kill a bee. 

The reptile man tests his audience. “What am I going to do if I see a snake?” he asks the children in the crowd. I’m thinking, “kill it” is not the answer Lipstick’s dad is looking for. The enlightened little soul next to me yells, “Walk away!” 

Our expert continues educating us. He says rattlesnakes don’t make nests, but I’m here to tell you there are snakes that do, and that there is a good reason that a collection of snakes, like a “herd” of cows,” is called a “slither.” 

I was home alone with my 18-month-old daughter Emily, preparing some spring garden beds while she staggered around the yard as toddlers do, picking up interesting things to put in her mouth. 

We had had a dead wild cherry tree taken out the year before, and the landscaper had left an enormous mulch pile between the shed, built in the far back corner of the yard, and the fence enclosing it. The mulch mountain created a wall that only an intrepid toddler would climb over to become trapped in the ten feet between the shed’s back wall and the boundary fence. 

Emily, pink cheeks and jacket, bulky diaper under a knit dress, was squatting on the far side of the pile, examining something in it when the mulch started to undulate. Startled, I grabbed my shovel to investigate and unearthed a snake about a foot long that had been warming itself in there. My baby was feet away and ignoring instructions not to move. So, I instinctively killed it. 

But before I could climb the pile and grab Emily, another snake poked its flat triangular head out. Then another, and another. For the next half hour, locked in place, I intercepted snakes as they slithered out of the mulch. Every time I thought it was safe to grab the baby, another snake was sidewinding towards her or the back porch. It was as if a switch had flipped, and I was on mother autopilot, acting without reasoning. By the time I could cross the mulch pile to sweep up Emily, I was crying for all of us.

We left the reptile man’s presentation when the cobra he was unveiling fanned its hood and took several strikes at him. There was a band playing “Brown Eyed Girl” over by the corn maze. We drifted over there.

Over the years, I’ve ended the life of a lot of creatures, but (hand up, please call on me) I’ve saved a lot as well. Daddy Longlegs I found in my pajama top on a camping trip. Wasps where I could just release the screen. A flying squirrel. A baby robin. 

If my soul is ever read, which I imagine is inevitable (and I worry wonder about), I hope the record shows that I’m really sorry. One optimistic friend says they’re in a better place. They’ve “gone into the light.” I’d like to think we all are going into the light, but I doubt any of us want to be dispensed there. 

What does it take to exchange fear for empathy? A snake named Lipstick is a start. But I think the empathy I’ve been unable to evoke is for myself. It’s just really hard to forgive myself for hurting the innocent. 

I suspect this is bigger than snakes. 

I take my regret and offer it up—Sorry, snakes. Sorry bugs. Sorry friends, sorry my kids, my relatives.  

Let the record show I did the best I could with who I was, and if I could be 8 years old again, playing in the stream at dusk when the water snakes made a run for the river, I’d bless them all and let them go. 

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

When I was a girl, legend had it that in the early 18th century, the pirate Blackbeard sailed up the Magothy River, attacked colonists living along Black Hole Creek, and in the midst of the fighting, rowed to shore with his first mate, carried a treasure chest 15 minutes inland, and buried it.

…In the pasture behind my house? There were signs of previous landholders and visitors at Barnstead—arrowheads, mounds of oyster shells, and once, a tiny glowing orb in the night–but where to dig for Blackbeard’s treasure was a mystery. At six, I tried to calculate how far a person could walk in 15 minutes. Mom said one mile. When I was seven, it occurred to me I’d have to adjust the distance to how far a person could walk carrying a load of rubies and gold coins.

By the time I was eight, my sister and I were making fake treasure maps in the hope of duping the neighbor kids into searching. 

Fire was our go-to method for imitating “old.” Maybe it was the opening credits of the TV show Bonanza, where flames sear a hole in a map of the Ponderosa and the Cartwrights ride through it on horseback. For the record, Mom was going to marry the handsome patriarch, Ben Cartwright. Sharon, my oldest sister, would get the oldest Cartwright brother, the taciturn Adam. Andee, as prettiest sister, would get Little Joe, also prettiest.

That left me with the middle brother. 

Hoss.

We don’t have to talk about this anymore. 

All of this is to say that we would draw our fake map, crumple the paper, burn the edges, then hide and fake-find it for the neighbor kids to marvel at. X always marked the spot.

This weekend, however, I went on another kind of treasure hunt. I joined a team of volunteers at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center for an excavation project located on the organization’s 2650-acre property on the Rhode River. We were digging at Java Ruins, a mansion built on the property during the Golden Age of Maryland planters. Previous research indicated an additional structure might have stood there centuries ago, and we hoped to unearth evidence. If this excavation produced nothing, that was okay. We’d simply try again. 

As I approached the guard gate, I said a quick prayer for those who might have used,  made, or broken whatever we might find—the request being that we somehow honor these people by finding evidence of their previous presence in the world. I offered a wish for the well-being of their spirits as well, aware that this plantation was built and maintained with slave labor. The romance of the past is always mitigated by the evidence that humanity is as unevolved today as it was before language, which is particularly disheartening when, in exchange for Eden, we were asked nothing more than to love one another. 

Jim, the principal investigator, was a very handsome man with a white beard and ponytail in a denim-blue ballcap. The morning team had dug out a site about 12 inches deep and 10-foot square, a red string delineating the perimeter. My first task was cleaning up the sides with a flat shovel. Three standing tables with sieves on rollers surrounded the hole. We lifted out loose dirt, dumped it in buckets, and then poured the contents onto the sieve screens to be shaken, much like sifting flour. We then smoothed out the remaining clumps with our gloved hands, searching for any mysterious objects.

I immediately found a shell about which I was absurdly excited. Jim! Stop the presses! This is huge! I found an oyster! 

They are white, easy to spot in the black soil, “low hanging fruit,” as one of my colleagues dryly observed with a smile. An hour later, Jim noted that Number One Digger had become pretty jaded, as I was now tossing shells in the discard pile as real treasure emerged. 

I unearthed a piece of pottery from 1780, probably part of a dinner plate, with a green edge and fluting. We found pieces of Delft China, creamware, a beautiful snow-white button, and a doll’s leg. All of which we tossed into buckets to be washed and identified later in the lab.

My fellow volunteers were as much of a discovery as those we were exposing with our hands. As conversation bubbled around me, we shared pieces of our lives with each other as we worked. 

A winsome satellite architect with salt-and-pepper hair had brought his 10-year-old son, and for the record, the kid dug more than any of us. I wanted to get to know better, an engaging woman about my age. We didn’t exchange names until I was leaving. Hers was long and biblical, and now I can’t remember it. 

Rachel, who runs the volunteer program, is an appealing ‘bird nerd’ who shared tips on finding Baltimore Orioles. (Look high!) A father had brought along his two dark-eyed, high-school-age daughters. The sisters and I smoothed the wet soil over the screen, uncertain as to what was too small to save. Our conclusion? Nothing. 

A lovely young mother with creamy skin and large glasses had brought her two little girls—about 8 and 10. The older sister had dyed her hair an intense, electric blue like she was wearing the sky on a cloudless day. I would never have let my daughters do this. I was charmed by the maturity of this woman’s mother-love and a bit wistful. I wish I could take the person I am now back in time to pay more attention to what matters. 

Less work, more play. Less judgment, more acceptance.

Less black-and-white, more blue. 

At home, I am still excited about what we found and trying to wrap my brain around the fact that I had hiked over that patch of land without a clue that a little girl, centuries gone, played with her doll there. Just as I may have played Swinging Statues with Blackbeard’s treasure just feet beneath the dry grass of my front yard or on the slope down to the river. Maybe it’s still there. Or never was. 

We made treasure maps for something we would never find because finding doesn’t matter. 

The joy is in the search. The willingness to dig deeper, look longer, love better, and try again.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.