Ed’s Stone

When I was very young, Mon Oncle P’tit Cul brought me a fossil because he knew I liked rocks. It’s a huge black one with hundreds of brachiopods, a slice of the ocean floor from 500 million years ago. From the first I kept it close to me because it was a souvenir from my cherished uncle. I’ve carried that rock around for forty years and now Mon Oncle is a widower, like my father. The stone has its place on a shelf in our home, proof we exist for less than a second, the beat of a hummingbird’s wing.