At the place I used to work, the place I called home five days a week for the past twenty years….

There is a secret.

There is a superstition.

There is a stone.

Walking across the breezeway from the parking garage to the entrance, from the entrance to the parking garage, (repeat, repeat, repeat) this stone in the facade (second star to the right) luxates under foot ever so slightly. It bows under the weight of those who tread upon it and rebounds upward with a satisfying “thwank” as they step across to the next, more stable stone.

A friend of mine (who left last year) first alerted me to this stone several years ago. It brought her luck she said, to stomp on the stone each morning as she headed in to work and repeated the process on her way home. I think it was satisfying to her, the way the stone refused to lay supine. Refused to allow passage without voicing its own desires. The way it protested, just a little, to the demands placed upon it; the fervent foot traffic always in a hurry, always running late, always two steps ahead of its self, never in the moment, never pausing to hear the “thwank, thwank, thwank” constant as a heartbeat, silent as a mantra.

I thought of my friend today as I stomped the stone for the very last time. I thought of how brave she was to make her own luck and listen to the “thwank” of her own heartbeat.

There is a weightlessness, an unmooring, an untethering that goes with letting go of the routine, the status quo that has grounded you. There is a trust I am not sure I have, that says “surrender” that says “solid ground and the rest of your life lies on the upward momentum of this unyielding stone.”

So I repeat my silent mantra, hope I am as brave as my friend, and stomp the stone once more for good measure. I smile and continue walking as it refuses to yield and rises up behind me with a defiant “thwank.”