Not Quite White Whales: the Joy and Whimsy of “White Porpoises”
Childhood memories peppered with minor mysteries
I often wonder, do other people live with minor mysteries that niggle at them, existing only at the very edges of awareness? They’re no big deal, and you’re not actively searching for the answer. Not so much white whales as their lesser cousins; white porpoises, if you will. I’ll give you an example of one of mine.
Throughout my life, I kept returning to a certain childhood memory. It happened at four or five years of age, summering at my family’s dacha—a rustic country homestead—in Russia.
This particular dacha had no electricity or indoor plumbing; water had to be collected in a wheelbarrow from a far-off well. (I rode the wheelbarrow on the way there.)
There was a strawberry patch to feast from and a rabbit hutch, complete with furry playmates, to lock myself into; the outhouse was painted forest green. Inexplicably, there were two large, rusted barrels full of swamp water, teeming with tadpoles.
I have memories of a piebald cat walking the rafters after it snagged a cut of meat off the chopping block; a saucer of milk was left out for him and any passing hedgehogs.
My most vivid memory—finding a huge slab of gemstones on the firewood pile, purple and streaked with white, gloriously lustrous, smooth and soothingly cold to the touch—is a tableau. One frozen snapshot. I don’t remember anything apart from that initial discovery.
Whatever happened to it? What was it?
Occasionally the memory would resurface, like a porpoise breaching the water, and I would lament the loss of that doubtlessly priceless gemstone. I’d be living in the lap of luxury if only I hadn’t misplaced it.
In those days, I also tried to snatch rubies from my dreams—my subconscious rendering this a charged and dangerous affair—certain that if I only concentrated hard enough, I could bring jewels with me into the waking world.
For several seconds of a hypnopompic hallucination (these, at least, could be called upon through sheer force of will), it seemed as though I had succeeded. Mind over matter; the guru Sai Baba manifesting a glittering ring from thin air. Alas, as I blinked sleep from my eyes, my fistfuls of rubies faded into the aether.
Isn’t the chaotic, quixotic imagination of a child really something? So is the charming naivety of thinking a veritable fortune could be found in a pile of kindling.
I never actively tried to find out what the mysterious gemstone from the dacha was. That’s the charm of white porpoises, you never know when the answer will find you out of the blue.
Many years later, I found myself at a work event at a museum after-hours. The throng of hipsters blocking my view of a live taxidermy demonstration was second only to the hordes milling around the bar. Feeling suffocated, I sought refuge in the minerals collection.
In the section dedicated to Russia and Siberia, a purple glisten caught my eye. Charoite. A semi-precious stone, it comes to a few dollars a carat—so much for living in the lap of luxury.
The thrill of a serendipitous discovery of something you’d long forgotten you were ever searching for; the sweet jolt of amusement that follows. I have many more* “white porpoises”, and I hope you do too.
Thanks for reading :)
*If you stumble upon a photo of a little girl in twin braids and pink coke-bottle glasses posing with a bunch of businessmen at the Sydney Aquarium hanging at the headquarters of some Japanese company—that’d be me; please let me know.