You’re embarking on a yearlong round-the-world adventure, and can take only one small object with you to remind you of home. What do you bring along for the trip?
I’m not religious. I’m what you’d call a lapsed catholic who knows way more about Buddha and Celtic beliefs than how to recite the Our Father (if they ever stop updating it!). But if there’s one thing that I will bring on a year-long adventure to explore the world, I’d bring the rosary my mother gave me before I left home for good.
It smells of roses and is supposedly made from rose petals shaped into beads. Someone who went to Italy gave it to her and when I noticed that it still sat in the same container year after year, unused (she’s a lapsed catholic, too), I asked her if I could have it. I remember how she thought I’d choose jewelry, but no, it was a simple rosary for me – I’m low maintenance that way.
This little thing is the one thing that reminds me of home. I can’t even recite the rosary but I like feeling and smelling the beads. I like lifting it out of its circular container and then putting it back down, hear the soft sound that the beads and their the metal findings make against each other and the plastic.
If there’s anything that reminds me of home – the home where I grew up where we didn’t grow any roses for my mother and stepfather preferred orchids, it’s this simple rosary that after all these years, still smells of roses.
Morrighan's Muse 
That’s a sweet choice, there’s nothing like the scent of home to remind you everything will be alright huh 🙂
So true! It would have been orchids, but then they didn’t really smell anything 🙂 And roses, well, since roses find it hard to thrive in uber-humid climates, I made do with that rosary
That works! 🙂
That works! 🙂
Beautiful !!
Thank you 🙂
Good question! I love the simplicity and meaning behind the rosary. I’d wear and bring my birthstone ring because it’s simple but elegant. It reminds me of home, and my parents’ generosity and love because they bought it for a birthday. It’s the only small thing I can think of 🙂
Thanks! My choice surprised me, too, as it was the first and only thing that came to mind that would remind me of home – not the home I’m in now with my family but the home where I came from. I think it’s the smell and the delicateness of the rosary and nothing to do with the religious symbolism attached to it. It’s also the only thing I ever asked from my mom, even though she has jewelry that way way more expensive than the rosary.
I love that you picked your birthstone ring. I figured if I’d had a birthstone ring, I’d probably bring it, too 🙂
Oh my goodness, how odd that I, an atheist, should have something similar and, what’s more, I made it myself. In a book on potpourri I found instructions for making beads out of rose petals. I followed them to the letter and was fairly successful although the beads have a rough texture and don’t smell like roses.
How can they update the Our Father? Did they just put it into modern language? Rather than search for this informatin myself, I’m renaming you Morrigoogle and asking you.
I’ve tried to make my own rosary beads, too! But they never turn out quite like my rosary. Maybe because it was made together with the tears of nuns or something…I don’t know
During the one time I go to church each year, I can no longer recite the Our Father with everyone else because they’ve revamped it to go with the times – or something.