Pebbles
by Suzanne Stenson O'Brien
Originally published for MOMbo
I have shiny pebbles in the bottom of my washing machine that I have washed for almost two years. Each load of cold socks peeled from the bin dings and clinks as the pebbles fall back to the bottom, too large to wash through the drain.
I keep my pebbles—some white, some brown, one black: like a little country—in my washing machine intentionally. They rotate and grind in memoriam of our august innocence, summer 2001, moving through life in a pocket, carefully selected from the turtle sandbox in our yard, or clinging to a tropical print towel that spent a sunny afternoon on the shores of Lake Superior. The pebbles remind me of a time "before" terrorism; before fear and confusion carved this line in my brow; before I craved and loathed my Times subscription, in that sultry summer rocking my family carefully and slowly toward the horizon.
