I love it when my head decides to fill with thoughts or memories that seem to come out of the clear blue sky, then take me down some random path of even more thoughts and memories.

Today, I thought about the dozen or so Apach Tears I have.  When I was about 4 or 5, my mother and I started an annual ritual of driving to Arizona on my birthday to see my Great Grandparents.  Each year, we would head out and go hunting for Apache Tears in the desert.  I have no American Indian blood in my family; in fact, I am no more than 3rd generation immigrant from every traceable direction in the family.  But something about the legend drew my grandmother in from the day she stepped foot on Arizona ground....she passed that along to mom and I.

Before my Great Grandmother passed away, she handed off her share of the stones to my mother, then my mother to me.

Today, out of the blue, I had to retrieve a few of them from the dusty cauldron that holds years worth of rocks that I have collected, hold them up to the light and think about the women in my family.  In March, my grandmother passed away - my grandfather's sister and I are now the oldest women in the family, with a difference of nearly 60 years in age.  It's kind of a strange feeling.  It will only be a matter of time before I am the matriarch of our bloodline.

Anyway - for those who don't know the legend behind the Apache Tear, or even what an Apache tear is.....I found a site that details the legend.  I miss hearing my grandmother tell the story as we walked through the desert.

Apache Tear Drop is a form of black obsidian. It is a calming translucent stone, found in Arizona and other parts of the U.S. It is composed of feldspar, hornblende, biotite and quartz. It was formed by rhythmic crystallization that produces a separation of light and dark materials into spherical shapes, and is a form of volcanic glass.

There is a haunting legend about the Apache Tear Drop. After the Pinal Apaches had made several raids on a settlement in Arizona, the military regulars and some volunteers trailed the tracks of the stolen cattle and waited for dawn to attack the Apaches.

The Apaches, confident in the safety of their location, were completely surprised and out-numbered in the attack. Nearly 50 of the band of 75 Apaches were killed in the first volley of shots. The rest of the tribe retreated to the cliff's edge and chose death by leaping over the edge rather than die at the hands of the white men.

For years afterward those who ventured up the treacherous face of Big Pacacho in Arizona found skeletons, or could see the bleached bones wedged in the crevices of the side of the cliff.

The Apache Women and the lovers of those who had died gathered a short distance from the base of the cliff where the sands were white, and for a moon they wept for their dead. They mourned greatly, for they realized that not only had their 75 brave Apache warriors died, but with them had died the great fighting spirit of the Pinal Apaches.

Their sadness was so great, and their burden of sorrow so sincere that the Great Father imbedded into black stones the tears of the Apache Women who mourned their dead. These black obsidian stones, when held to the light, reveal the translucent tear of the Apache.

The stones are said to bring good luck to those possessing them. It is said that whoever owns an Apache Tear Drop will never have to cry again, for the Apache Women have shed their tears in place of yours.