I’ve started a series about travel souvenirs thanks, in part, to inspiration and encouragement from Souvenirs and Roberta Hill, Wander After 70.

Souvenirs - Part 1

No thank you. No room in our backpacks, I always say. We do not buy souvenirs of travels – it’s one of our top 5 traveller’s rules.

But as I sit here at my desk, I’m actually surrounded by objects that came from our travels. At least one is a completely ‘normal’ souvenir, although it does not have a country or city name printed on it.  A few are what is considered ‘normal’ for a knitter to buy on their travels. One is technically illegal, and the rest are either ephemera or junk.

The most common items that I collect on my travels are rocks and sea glass. My collection is vast, and mostly unlabelled. Sadly, I have no idea where most of these bags of rocks or glass came from. Every trip, I swear I will make sure that I label things, but I never do. 

There’s a little bag of rocks and sea glass on the bookshelf right over there – I haven’t a clue where it came from. But it is sitting beside a little canning jar full of very smooth rocks that I picked up at various beaches in Newfoundland last summer. 

My mom has dementia. For years now, even when she was well, she would carry little items like stones in her pocket that she liked the feel of, and she would hold them in her hand as she walked. With this in mind I picked up the nicest, smoothest stones I could find. 

A few would have sufficed, but I can never just stop at a few. I love picking up stones. 

I had so many by the end of the trip, I decided that I would offer these stones to any family members who found them interesting. And a few took me up on my offer.

But mom took the most, although, to my knowledge, none of them ended up in her pockets.

At some point, my mom rediscovered these rocks and decided to display them on her deck. Mom is still very good at making things beautiful, and the rocks are artfully laid out on the table. 

One day, I asked mom if she remembered where these rocks came from? She said that she’d picked them up over the years on her walks around town. 

I just nodded in agreement.