The Stone (For My Mother)

I know this place. Through the back door, over the small wooden bump in the ground of the doorway, onto the cool, smooth surface of our kitchen floor. I can feel the gloss of our table beneath my soft, warm hands and the sharp corners where I so often bumped my head as a child. I sit in my favorite of our five white chairs. The back leg wiggles a little as I sit, just as it has always done. Flowers adorn the table, a myriad of colors and sizes, a reflection of our family, bold and bright. I glance at the coal stove piled with breads and ripening fruits in the colorful bowls my mother has collected over the years. I think of my mother, standing beside the sink, eating a ripe nectarine. The juices slowly pour over her slender, boney fingers. Another bite, and the sweet cold liquid moves further down her hand, covering her ring--a bright gold band with a large black stone in the center.

I remember looking at the stone as a child, wondering why all the other mothers had diamonds on their fingers, while my mother settled for this plain, black stone. It didn't sparkle in the light. It wasn't worth any real money. It didn't make rainbows when the sun moved through it in just the right way. It was so ordinary. I knew she deserved so much more. My mother, who had kept the monsters away in the middle of the night. My mother, who had made every birthday special and every wound heal. My mother, who I believed knew everything there was to know in the world and who I loved more than anything in it. My mother, my hero, my best friend, had only this black, commonplace ring to wear. It made me so sad.

As a young girl sitting in her lap, I wrapped my fingers around the stone. It felt so round and smooth beneath my small fingertips as if it were hardened silk. It was cold in the warmth of my hand, but inviting, like the relief of a soft rain on a hot summer day. I wanted to dance in her ring the way I danced in the rain, fearless and free. I looked up into my mother's eyes, into her infinitely dark pupils. My face reflected back at me in their darkness. I smiled, and returned my gaze to the stone.

Years later, I found myself on a pebble beach in England, in the small town of Budleigh Salterton. My mother's aunt lived there, a round cheerful woman who instantly reminded me of Santa's wife. The town was like stepping into a child's storybook. It consisted of one small high street with a quaint handful of shops that older woman wandered for hours, carrying their little Yorkshire terriers in woven picnic baskets by their sides. I stepped out the front door into the fresh morning air, breathing in the sweet simplicity of it all. I loved that place.

I wandered onto the beach, making my way down to the quietly breaking waves. I picked up a dark pebble from beneath my naked aching feet. Passing it from hand to hand, I rubbed it against my soft skin, feeling the weight of it move between my fingers like the tide; back and forth, back and forth. The motion of the waves had tossed it that way, creating it's polished shine that now glowed in the early morning sun. Beauty from chaos. It held secrets I would never know and answers I could never find. I looked up to the vast horizon, the numerous shades of grey cascading across the cloud ridden sky. I looked back at the stone, staring at it for a while, delighting in its hidden wisdom, and then smiled as I threw it back into the waters from which it came.

On a cliff overlooking the lake, I unfolded my sleeping bag to prepare for a much needed rest. I stared up at the night sky in silence, admiring the beauty and intensity of its vast blackness. It was so dark, so deep, so endless. I breathed slowly, listening to the events of the day running through my head. I looked at my friends beside me, wondering what they were thinking about this moment, this black sky. I wondered if they felt the comfort that I did in that moment, if they felt home. I wondered if their mothers had rings that shined like the ebony sky. I wondered if the sky felt as round and smooth as the stone in my mother's ring. I sat there staring upward, wondering, drifting off into a sleep beneath a blanket of burning stars.

When my mother came to visit me for the first time at college, I looked down at her ring as we ate lunch together. It was different than I had remembered it. It didn't seem so plain, so ordinary. I looked up into her eyes. I thought about how beautiful she looked at that moment, how beautiful she had always looked. My mother isn't like a diamond. She isn't sharply cut with limitations and borders. She isn't transparent, relying on light to fill her. My mother is full. She is round and smooth, solid and endless, whole and complex. She is filled with wisdom and love. She is strong. She is a stone.

I looked back at her small fingers into the vastness of her ring. The black stone stared back at me like the dark and deep pupils of my mother's eyes, like the night sky in the wilderness, like the pit of the nectarine my mother devoured with such tenderness between her sticky fingers. The black stone is simple and graceful and dignified. The black stone is beautiful like my mother.

Sometimes I wander barefoot outside, feeling the soft ground beneath my feet, the give and take of the soil as I make imprints of my toes. I pick up stones as I go, passing them back and forth between my hands, matching their smooth curves to the slant of my fingers. I look at them in the palm of my hand, juxtaposed against my delicate white skin. I see my mother's ring. I see the depths of her eyes, smell her scent in the soft wind, feel the comfort of her love as we embrace. I know this place, I think to myself, and I smile, slowly returning the stone to the earth from which it came.