When I was kid, I walked a lot with my head down, not because I was shy or afraid of tripping over my own feet, but because I was a scavenger.
I was always looking in the road, on the sidewalk, in the grass for rocks, for stray pennies, for virtually anything my parents would consider trash, but I found to be treasure.
The sidewalks in Upstate New York were mostly made of concrete, but were here and there made of shale and there were always bits and pieces of rocks lingering by the grass. Some contained hidden surprises like fossils that only appeared when the rock was broken.
Other rocks may have seemed like nothing special, but contained ridges or grooves or veins that made interesting and unique patterns so that it was impossible to leave the rock abandoned on the side of the road.
One day, and I can’t be sure when or where but I’m assuming it was along the shore of Cayuga Lake, I found what I thought was the perfect skipping stone. It was oval and flat and completely smooth as if God had decided that the skipping stone needed to be its own variety of stone like granite or pumice or agate.
It was just perfect.
I could imagine flinging it across the lake and watching it hop and skip twenty, maybe forty times, before disappearing into the water.
But that would mean, of course, that I would lose the most perfect skipping stone in the world … forever.
I still have that skipping stone. It’s here somewhere in the house in a box with other things I could never part with.
Yes, I have kept a plain, ordinary grayish rock in a box for probably twenty years.
All that makes me think about the things we keep and why we keep them.
Last night my computer finally died after being hit with another virus and not having the strength to fight it off.
I managed to save my documents to an external drive. The drive is about the size of two decks of cards. As I stood there holding it in my hand, I realized that it held my life, or at least the last fifteen years of it.
But I realized that even if that drive turns out to be corrupted with same virus and I lose all that I’ve done on a computer for that last fifteen years … I haven’t lost my life.
In the end, pictures, music, word documents … they don’t breathe, they don’t laugh, they don’t cry, they don’t hold you and keep you warm on nights when you feel the cold both literal and figurative.
They’re things.
Like that skipping stone.
I was looking for it today in between church services. I couldn’t find it, but I know it’s here somewhere and when I do find it, I plan on letting it go.
I plan on setting it free.
There’s a lake next to the church with water that is flat and glassy except when the occasional fish jumps, or the otter that lives there pops out and flips like he’s doing a show for Sea World.
It’s the perfect lake for the perfect skipping stone.
It’s a stone that has followed me from my childhood in New York, to my college years in Ohio, to my adulthood here in Florida. It has sat quiet and still during the struggles in my life and during the joy.
It was waiting, I suppose, for now, for when I can finally let it go and let go with it a part of my past.
And by doing so skip one small step forward.
