My New Pet Rock

To the giver of my pet rock (you know who you are!), thank you for my new companion. It fits wonderfully in the palm of my hand as I walk along the road.

Odyssey is its new name. When I was a kid, my favorite words were odyssey and crisp. The former sounded better as a name; the latter sounded a little too edible or seasonal. And Odyssey sounded more interesting than “Blackie” or “Rockie.” Odyssey is now back at home with me, sitting next to my computer as I type, if sitting is what you’d call it. I like that it is black and weighty with accents of greens, yellows, blues, and black thanks to your care in painting half of it. In photography terms, that’s called the “hand of man” when nature has hints of human life in it.

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Calling Odyssey “it” feels a little empty, though. I’m tempted to call him a boy, since I’m used to raising boys. Then again, my husband has thought it would be nice to have a girl if we ever had a third child, just to experience what it’s like, so it might be new and fun to think of her as a girl. I’m just as confident that Oddysey is genderless as I am confident that Odyssey wouldn’t mind being called either one. Actually, I’m quite confident that Odyssey isn’t capable of “mind”-ing anything. This will behoove me if I ever forget something in caring for him. I think I’ll go with the male pronoun.

There are several things that I can assure you Odyssey won’t have to go without. I can pretty much guarantee that he will have plenty of company surrounding him from dawn to bedtime, now that life has changed from COVID-19 and the kids are no longer in school. He’ll hear conversations, laughter, guidance, debates, squabbles, forgiveness, and love communicated in all kinds of ways. He’ll notice half the people around him getting ever-so-gradually taller and stronger while the other half continue to tell them what to do.

As time goes on, little rock will observe us grapple with new technology and new ideas while struggling to teach ourselves how to adapt to wiser lifestyles that make better sense for preserving the nature Odyssey came from.

He enters our lives at a strange time, when people are overly sanitized and all about isolation in hopes of deflecting this spreading contagion. I’d say he’ll get an earful from the news about a plunging stock market, fear of how the future might be, and fear about money concerns, but thankfully he lacks ears. He can rest easy, being a rock. He could teach us some old ways, in case we need to develop some skills really quickly, but he is silent. What plants did people used to eat in the forest? How did they make what they needed? No response.

Nevertheless, I think Odyssey will enjoy living with us. Today, we did our first school day at home. Then our older son went to work for a couple outside on their property while I gardened and our younger son and my husband cut up branches that fell from the high winds and carted them to better places in the woods. I’m about to start dinner while the older one is working on a school science project – building his own aqueduct, Roman style.

We are so thankful every night for the basic things – food, clean water, hot showers, cozy beds, and life lived in nature. We welcome Odyssey inside to experience all of this with us.

I love thinking about your thought processes and efforts in readying some rocks to be adopted out. Ours rests quietly on the table in the dimming light of dusk.

Please let me know if he requires some care that you recommend.