We live in a world that manufactures products by the millions. Yet the things we keep for decades are almost never the expensive things. They’re the ordinary objects that became witnesses to our lives. I was a teenager the first time I understood this, though I didn’t have words for it yet. I was walking the shoreline in Petoskey, Michigan — my hometown, the place that gave its name to the stone I was about to find without knowing what I was looking for. The water was cold. T

I learned to stay silent long before I earned the title Marine.