bradytelic

The Perfect Stone

My father always liked skipping stones. An aerospace engineer, we would often find him deep in thought, unaware of the world around him. Skipping stones was different though, he said it made him feel present. Growing up, he would often take my younger brother and I with him to the lake and skip some stones, just as his father had done with him when he was growing up. Some of the closest held memories I have are of the early mornings that my younger brother and I would spend helping him find stones to skip at the lake near our childhood home. We would wake up in the morning and he would make us breakfast, then he would grab his old Lowe's bucket and we would walk down to the lake. Once we were there, we would help him sift through the rocks and throw them in that Lowe's bucket until it was filled about halfway, then we would get to skipping. Dad could get it to skip nine or ten times, but we never could get more than two, maybe three, and we would end up just watching my dad do it instead. As we got older we did it less and less, but he would continue to do it by himself, even after we had grown up and moved away.