Mother Stone

It was an autumn morning and I found one. There have been so many passing along the ground that it’s hard to remember which day I found this one among the myriad, but it was autumn because I remember the leaves turning. My mother stone. She collected them to paint, some to keep and some to leave, always the same shape but sometimes different sizes. They found me regardless of my looking or not. I never collected them; they were better left untouched or for someone else to see. Touchstones across the world each a kind word from my mother destined to brighten the day of an unknowing soul, at least that’s what I thought they were. But it was autumn when the leaves began to change to their brilliant warm hues and trails of steam rose from my warm cup of coffee as I sorted through my packed belongings. Staring at it through the steam of my coffee brought me back to the flight deck of a naval carrier, its steam pouring through the cracks making it hard to see the small rock with painted-on hotdogs and pizza she’d sent me among other gifts. The heat, the sweat, the loneliness, the exhaustion all rushed back. The unpainted stone rests in my hands.

There is a profound power held in memory. How easily our minds grab hold of something familiar and transport us to somewhere that makes sense. A mere stone delivered me back into the steaming mists of the scorching Persian Gulf aboard a floating city of death. This stone was a different size, it was bigger and would have been better suited for a desk decoration or an heirloom or even a trailside keepsake. People do that, paint rocks and leave them places. I’ve seen plenty and many of them are like the self-serve novel stands, take one and leave one. I’ve always come up short at the novel stands and seemingly only find them in a city I’m not from and without a book in my hand. I’ve also never seen anyone else partake in the novel stands or rock piles as if they appear suddenly along the path in a surplus. Maybe they do, I could see my mother dropping a truckload of specialty painted rocks off for passers to pick from. I wonder if others leave as they take or if they just take a rock or book and never look back.

This stone wouldn’t have been outside, it would need to be on a desk or table or mantle. Somewhere nice. The weight felt familiar in my hands, but I couldn’t be sure if I’d had one like this that she’d given me. The problem with memory is that often times the mind enjoys watching you work to remember what it is the memory is saying. Oh, the toil, some of the slight remembrances have pressed upon my fervent need for mental closure. The memories themselves are just waiting and we are like someone standing in a room full of doors trying to decide which one holds the prize. It’s maddening, but the relief is unfounded once the past is revealed. The mind has a dangerous amount of power to be able to control what we do and do not remember. I feel vulnerable saying it. I’ve always considered the growing number of unfortunate souls who lack the ability to call upon those memories the loneliest to die. A man without his mind is a man who’s lost himself. What purpose does one have without a mind, to exist? That’s not good enough.

What are we without memory, without legacy, without history, without experience besides a newborn babe relegated to a personal prison of age and discomfort? How close we all are to the fathomless pit of emptiness where the only things that make sense are primal tendencies. So readily do we push our minds into the jaws of things so far removed from sanity that we project nothing short of a crash course into a life unremembered. Generations will be remembered for their inability to feel the sun, to see the mountains and oceans. Is that even a life worth remembering? Could we contest that it’s something we’d all want to reflect upon, the helpless depression from being connected to the entire world without ever taking a step out into it. Our lifelines have become our anchors and our minds tricked into believing the deeper we sink the farther we climb.

Yet this stone is unpainted. There would never be a reason she wouldn’t have painted this stone, especially considering its size, it would have made a great canvas. There might have been no intention of leaving it unpainted, providing me the opportunity to paint my own piece. She was an affluent believer in mundane beauty. Stones hadn’t been her only muse, she found anything and everything to entertain. Nature is beautiful and simple. Fire flicking at night, branches swaying in a breeze, the ocean’s calm and rage, all things we have the potential to see every day, and still, we pay no mind to beauty. I was taught to hold reverence for the surrounding world. A rock is a canvas, a four-leaf clover a smile. The Sun shines every day and oh what paintings it may produce. The elegance of a single brush stroke the Sun lay upon a forest from midday to evening is something to believe in. A hope and promise that things will never remain and always change. Every day the world experiences changes, we change. The forest becomes a different animal in its transition from night to morning. There is always room to change and attempt something new wearing the net of the Sun’s promise that there will be another day tomorrow. Finding beauty in a single flower is to become one with the world. True peace is found at its center, one I think artists hungrily seek with no true hope of finding it. Maybe the center isn’t what brings the peace, the destination not the fulfilling end necessary for contentment. The steps we take to find our way there, the pauses to soak in the Sun’s rays and the bird’s songs, the removal of the torrential war society perpetually weighs on the souls of the free, that is peace. Knowing when to stop and breathe, and to stop thinking about thinking and about stopping thinking.

The rock sat alone in a small box with some photographs. I didn’t look at them. What could they have shown me about this rock? There were no paints or brushes in the box, that would make too much sense. The rock was smooth like one you’d find along the banks at Lake Lanier or the better-known water tomb of Oscarville. There is a belief that Lanier is haunted because of the many drowned towns alongside Oscarville that rest in its murky depths, I’m not sure. People always claim they get pulled underwater or the spirits keep them under if they dive too deep. The number of intoxicated boaters that flood the lake every waking minute of summertime fun is your reason. I have decided against ever going out again unless to pontoon in a cove with other like-minded calm human beings hoping for a fun, easy day. There have been so many people that I’ve been killed on those waters, and for what. Is it really that frowned upon to have a little bit of sensibility when steering a boat with so many others in the water. Why entertain the chance of ceasing to exist because you had a few beers and wanted to hammer the throttle to the floor. Why would people continue such malpractice knowing the horrid outcome so many others have faced? There is a fire within the soul that entreats the prospect of invincibility, inebriated or not, though inebriation tips the logical scale a bit further. It’s hard to comprehend that the Romans made a phrase for what the modern man refuses to accept, memento mori. We all must die, so it’s the intangible belief that we somehow know today isn’t that day, or at least it’s what we choose to believe. How many have been wrong in that gamble I wonder; how many are making that bet tomorrow or even right now.

How could we ever know what will happen? Is it because we have and use the knowledge we’ve attained over time to make such judgments. In the event we have no memory, what then? We wouldn’t be plagued by the worry of what could kill us because we’d have no concept of what’s dangerous. There’s an argument to be made that our decisions are better because of our experience, but I’m disappointed every day by the disillusionment of human evolution. We have spirit and that counts for something.

I’m going to call my mother and ask about the rock. There is no reason it should be in here and aside from her putting it in my totes prior to my move, it’s a mystery. The thought of it all makes me hungry, starving even. The kindred spirit of body and mind yearning to find out what purpose this rock has in my box. Brothers and enemies, my mind refuses food until the task is completed and my stomach lets me know there is more energy necessary for the task at hand. The beautiful dance of light and dark, logic and emotion, pride and humility, nature and nurture, war and peace, all two-sided coins, choices to be made that we won’t know the answers to until the moments arrive.

“No son, I haven’t a clue what that’s doing in your box. I didn’t put it there.”

“You sure momma, it looks like one you’d use?”

Her face fills the screen of my phone, and she laughs, “That’s not one of my rocks. That’s that piece of ruin you got in Greece. The smooth stone they sold in the gift shop, didn’t it have pictures in the box?”

I’m going to go make a sandwich.