Sunday, June 5, 2016

I Heart Stones

It all started so innocently. While walking on a beach that my late parents used to frequent when they were dating in the 1940s, I mindlessly gathered a few stones from the sand as a remembrance of my time there. It wasn't until hours later when I examined the stones I had hastily gathered and pocketed that I realized one of them was distinctly shaped like a heart. A couple of years later, friends who visited that same beach brought back a stone for me that their young daughter had found. It, too, was heart-shaped. Last spring, while removing mounds of dry leaves that were caught between evergreen shrubs next to our garage, I grabbed a handful of brown leaves. A heart-shaped stone mysteriously found its way into my hand, as well. Since then, I have been finding heart-shaped stones with greater regularity, often simply by looking down while out for a walk and finding a lone, heart-shaped stone on my path in front of me. Earlier this spring, there was a period of three weeks in which I found a heart-shaped stone each of those weeks -- on the path, all by itself, just as if it had been lovingly placed there for me and me only to find. My collection of heart-shaped stones now includes nine of different colors, textures and sizes. They are displayed in a little vessel on my writing desk where I can look at them, touch them and reflect on them every day. I've always liked rocks and stones. Now, I can honestly say that I Heart Stones.