All a round our home there are stones. They all have a soft shape, some are multi-coloured and they sit on window sills and mantelpieces and are described as ‘paperweights’, picked up from beaches and walks around the world over the years. I am so used to them being here I sometimes forget they are mementos of a life.
But we all like to keep things from places we have been. There is a whole tourist industry in plastics making items for people to take home from places they have stayed. We like to have something more than just a memory. Something which speaks of the place or its traditions, often something handmade by the local people. Like climbing to the top of Masada where just about everyone picks up a piece of stone and zips it into their bags touching as they think, their bit of history. There are times of course, when we cannot take anything because it is all too precious so instead we leave graffiti behind like Byron’s famous name etched into the stonework at the Coliseum.
But my mother enjoyed finding stones that fitted her hand, had a certain weight and interesting shape and look. Of course we do use them as paperweights though I understand their secondary use is to give a burglar a good hit on the head. And there is something reassuring about a piece of some foreign land becoming part of one’s home.
As if a person can go round the world, joining the dots with through merely existing.