06 Jun Pebbling: Little Tokens of Love
When I am traveling for work, I find myself taking screenshots and pictures of things I think the girls would like. I might stumble across a video of a baby giraffe first standing up on wobbly legs, find a cookie recipe we might want to bake together or a science experiment we might want to try, or take a screenshot of news stories about good people doing helpful things. This has become a routine and when I return home, the girls will now ask, “Do you have any fun things to share?”
Returning home late from a trip last week, I peeked into the girls’ room where they were sleeping and kissed their cheeks. They sat up in bed, nodding and rubbing their eyes. After talking about our days, the girls pointed to my phone and asked, “Do you have any fun things to share?” These were the three things I told them:
1. A farmer named Ben Jackson wasn’t able to attend his aunt’s funeral, so instead he laid out grain for his sheep in the shape of a heart so that she could see his tribute through the clouds. I showed the girls the aerial video of the thousands of sheep making a giant heart formation as they found a spot along the heart outline to eat the grain.
2. If you pick a dandelion, turn it upside down, dip the puff into a cup of water and then pull it straight out, the dandelion emerges perfectly dry without a single seed missing—remarkable given how easily its delicate seeds scatter.
3. A panda bear living in a rescue center makes an exaggerated grimacing facial expression whenever she breaks bamboo, mimicking the humans who made this same expression when they struggled to break bamboo for her when she was younger.
We talked about the sweetness of the sheep forming a heart, laughed about the grimacing panda, and made a plan to find a dandelion and dunk it into water to see if the experiment would work.
I stayed next to the girls as they pulled up the covers and closed their eyes, laughing as Emma gently tapped me on the arm and made a grimacing panda face before drifting off to sleep. I thought about the way I carry these stories excitedly home, smiling as I anticipate the girls’ reactions to these bookmarked stories.
These little tokens of love remind me of penguin pebbling. Have you heard of this behavior? It’s a simple yet profound gesture where penguins present pebbles to each other to express affection and build connection. In the sparse, icy landscape of Antarctica, Gentoo penguins have very few twigs or leaves to build their nest. But they do have pebbles. The penguins search the beach to find the perfect pebble, scoop it up in their beaks, and waddle back to their loved one, presenting it as if to say, “I found this just for you. I hope you love it.”
Collecting stories and video clips and news articles are the way I’ve brought a touch of pebbling into my family life. They say, “I was thinking of you,” and “This reminded me of you.”
In the quiet acts of love we so often find the loudest echoes of connection.
Whether it’s a pebble for a penguin, a beautiful flower picked from the backyard, a song, a photo or a story, these small tokens nurture relationships and show we care.
It’s always the small things.