The Rock

What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?

On this day many years ago, my bride of six months picked her way across some rocks and sat on a boulder in the middle of the Chattahoochee River. She settled, then looked at me and smiled.

It was the perfect time of day for photography and I bracketed everything with my 35mm Pentax, hoping one of them would be a keeper. The fall colors of NW Georgia that year were stunning, certainly nothing like back in South Florida.

We finished and on impulse, I picked up a rock from the banks and put it in my pocket. Sue looked at me. “Just a souvenir,” I said. 

The sun was setting as we walked back to our hotel, holding hands and turning from the wind that had become cold. We were both starving and the menu looked amazing. So did our room.

A bit of Victorian poetry from Fitzgerald came to mind: “…a Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread and Thou.”

Yep, pretty much, Fitzy. Pretty much.

Of our many road trips, that was one of my top three. We were newlyweds; I was working as a newly minted engineer at IBM; and everything was fresh, new. We were on our first steps of a lifetime of discovery.

It’s hard now to believe that our 40th anniversary will be here before long. My parents celebrated their 40th the year we got married. We took them on a dinner cruise and an anniversary board game that I made prompted a rehash of dozens of stories.

I’d heard almost all of them, but time back then was an abstraction; I was in my twenties and hearing about stuff that was older than me simply didn’t register.

A few years ago, my kids were looking at the picture of Sue on the boulder and heard the backstory story for the first time. But I could see that they, like me, didn’t really get it. It was just some trip Mom and Dad went on a long time ago. So what?

I wasn’t willing to let it rest; I take my job as the family historian seriously. I did a little research and found the hotel we stayed at all those years ago was still there. I booked us a reservation and as I hung up, the kids cheered.

Helen, GA, is designed to resemble a little alpine village. Everything has Tudor-esque architecture, there’s at least three cuckoo clock shops, and during October and November, there’s nonstop oompah music, German dishes and pitchers of German beer.

By the third day, we had seen and done everything Helen had to offer. Before we headed out on Part 2 of our road trip to Smoky Mountains National Park, I had an idea.

“Sue,” I said. “Let’s see if we can find that boulder. I know it was sort of near our hotel.”

For about 30 minutes we walked downstream, then up, as the kids skipped stones and took pictures. We finally found it and I could see the kids making the connection: Ah. So THIS is the place.

“Hey, let’s get another picture,” I said. I couldn’t remember her exact pose in the original, and it was midday, not late afternoon; but good enough. I snapped several and we were off.

Back home, I compared the original picture with the new one and my mind drifted back over our years together. Everybody has their own journey, their own story that can’t ever be adequately described. I held the rock from that day and fell into a reverie; the kaleidoscope of memories from all those intervening years was almost too much.

I didn’t get it when Mom and Pop tried to explain their life and how fast 40 years had passed. I barely get it myself, now, even though I have lived it. I’ve always lived intentionally, knowing each hour is fleeting; each moment, experience, is perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Carpe diem.

But still, here I am, looking at two bookends of a life together; at a girl whose face has grown more lovely with the years, who keeps my secrets. Whose countenance gloriously and mysteriously looks back at me in varying degrees in the faces of our three kids.

And at a rock, the most common of things, completely ordinary…except to me. It’s a silent witness, a stowaway unchanged after almost 40 years. It will remain unchanged long after we’re gone.

It’s a testament to the timelessness of love.

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Images by author and Bing