ROCKS

            There is a small handful of two-inch road rock that sits on the dash of my pickup.  They were given to me by four-year old son.  He hand-picked them one day as we walked a pasture with a fresh-spread lane leading down a hilltop to a working corral that becomes knee-high mud in wet winters.  Twice, since that day, he has asked if I still have them.  I show him the pile on the dash when we check cows again, and when he sees them, his face and soul smile.

            I know it’s just a handful of rocks.  I am grown.  I have learned better than to put sentiment in the common—even if beautiful—everyday, but he has not.  He is young, dream-eyed and innocent.  I am something different, or so I feel the world of Man desires me to be. 

            To him, the rocks were the cleanest stones he’d ever seen.  Their hard edges of grinding and shattering from a days-ago sheet of bedrock remained unweathered by the world, each retaining a unique shape and form having not yet been ground down, made common, by entering upon their destiny which is to be stepped on, trampled, driven over until ground to dust or buried again into the earth; all for the comfort of others desiring to haul more than the weight of the world will bear without becoming buried too themselves. 

            To my son, these rocks are a treasure, a discovery in sight and form that gave a happiness to his heart.  This is what he gifted to me, and understanding his eyes and unweathered heart, they become, too, to me.

            To a heart that loves, everything holds beauty.  Everything has potential to be offered as a gift.  For minds that love imagine and dream that the same objects that strike their souls might too affect the heart in another; and the lover—cherishing sensed effect—wishes to give this same wonder to another and, of this, a gift is offered.  Acts, words, letters, smiles, flowers, travels, songs, homes, kingdoms…rocks—diamonds down to the most common stone—all are gifted of the heart to communicate to another they are special and to show that they are loved.

            I want to love like that. Some days, I do.

            Sometimes, when I forget how good I have it, the rocks are there, catching the bottom corner of my sight on drives in thought and solitude; and when nearly lost to a state of something near to sadness, I am witness to them there.  I see them.  I am returned to a better thought, and I remember: someone cares enough about me to gift me an offering from their heart.  Even a handful of two-inch rock—spread for a season and destined to be buried in next winter’s mud (for eyes with love see none of this, only the wonder inherent within)—can become a treasure and testament to love gifted in offering from one heart to another.

            No matter what else I may think on days this experience lives, when I see those rocks, I remember from whom they came–the meaning in his gift–and I know that I am blessed.

 

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