Sweat the small stuff.

When one is young, one rages against secrecy, sealing love with the promise of no-secrets, all dark nooks and corners revealed and inspected.

As one grows in time, and gathers more nooks, corners, crevices and cracks, some darkness escapes the torchlight of words and intent, and bores itself inside your soul, so deep, that somehow sharing seems like a task unto itself. And maybe perhaps, because with time, the ears that sought your secrets out, change too.

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The symbolism enjoyed by pebbles in our collective cultures is intriguing. One of my first symbolic references to a pebble was that of pain: I remember reading in 'moral science' class at the convent I studied, about how Jesus stopped a crowd that was stoning 'a prostitute', with words that forced them to reflect before they act. I did not know Mary Magdalene then, but when I discovered her through Jose Saramago, I often wondered how harsh, the smooth pebble must have felt like, for Jesus.

Whether for anecdotes about how full or free to keep life (friends and family are the pebbles in the jar, work is but the smooth sand around it); to how to be more giving or adapting; from images of smooth pebbles skipping over tranquil waters; to being symbolic of a Zen state in life, the pebble is both humble, and primordial.

Did you know that when Nino was in my belly, and I saw him (at that time I did not know the baby's gender) the first time during sonography, I though he looked like a pebble, one smooth surface, one part rough. He was called Pebble by friends and family for the rest of the pregnancy.

And now, as I sit typing this, next to a glass jar filled with white, grey and black pebbles that Nino has picked over his years, everything, every symbol, every anecdote has come rushing to my mind, tugging me along, making my path.

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What stories have the pebbles made for you?