Lotus and mandala on the thigh

The tide put the crate on the slipway at four this morning, split along one side, and inside were forty-odd teal glass drops wrapped in newspaper from Gdansk. Your father would have sworn at the pallet men. I did not swear. I sat on the wet steps with my torch in my teeth and counted them like rosary beads until the gulls started.

Mrs Oake from the chandlery says they came off a lamp-maker's wreck that went down off the Mumbles in the bad winter, and that every fisher wife in the town has been waiting forty years for someone to dredge them up. I said I'd take them to the bench by the lifeboat house and see if the light would do anything. It did. Hold one up at noon and the whole harbour turns the green of a lotus leaf seen under water.

I've started stringing them on wire between the mooring rings, dotted with brass beads like the chain on Grandmother's mantel clock. Eleven strands so far. The dotwork is tedious, I'll grant you, one pinprick at a time, but the sea does the shading for free.

Come home before the spring tides. Bring the good pliers. I want you to see the centre piece I've been setting, a ring of petals that open toward the water, with the drops hanging off the edges like the last of a summer rain.

Love, Nell