Heart Stones

One of the sweetest moments I have experienced lately is when the youngest of the Fab 5, Cale, came to me, one fist clenched tightly.  Urgently he tugged on my shirt and announced, "Look, PamPam, I have something for you," and thrust his arm upwards.  Unfurling his fingers, there in the palm of his sweaty, dirty little hand lay a gray, unassuming rock.  "It's a heart," he proudly announced.

Heart-shaped stones can be found in rocky areas, on beaches, just about anywhere rocks are.  As they are described in the book jacket for author and photographer Josie Iselin's book appropriately named Heart Stones:  "A heart stone is one of nature's gifts. Heart stones are not rare or precious in the typical sense--a good scour of a beach with any stones at all will usually turn up one or two heart-shaped stones. But heart stones, lifted from their obscurity, with all of their cracks and blemishes, lopsided and imperfect, are simply the best find....".

But to be "lifted from their obscurity", they have to be found.  To find, we have to look.  Open our eyes. Take the time to see things that are mundane and uninteresting and find the unique and unusual in them.  We have all probably walked over many heart stones in our lives.  Sometimes we are too busy and rushed looking at what is ahead of us to be able to concentrate on what may be right under our nose. How much do we miss simply because we don't see the small details?

Heart stones are not very valuable on their own merits.  But when a little boy imparts it as a love offering, it becomes the most precious of materials, worth more than any silver or gold to a grandmother's heart. My heart stone lies safely in the drawer with all my jewelry and I often pick it up and rub it between my finger and thumb, relishing its roughness, remembering the sweetness and poignancy of that moment. And all because one little boy saw the beauty in a dull, gray stone.