She Sees Seashells

By Danielle Sharkey

Some of my earliest memories include shell “hunting” with my grandmother. Mommom, I call her. Age has been kind to her aside from sunspots on her skin. I like to think her galaxy of spots map out the stories of her sunkissed life. She’d sing to me, and I’d pretend I didn’t know I was her favorite grandchild. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray.” The soundtrack of our summers. We’d map out the tides and plan our breakfast around the comings and goings of the ocean. It was a voluntary ritual. We’d scour the surf for shells with perfect round holes in the top that were just waiting for me to thread a string through and wear proudly around my neck. We’d exchange excited emotions when either of us had found something “worthy” of extra attention. We’d marvel at shells of all shapes, sizes, colors and textures, whether whole or fragmented. The truth is, no shell is better or worse than another. The beauty was found in the time spent, not about anything objectifiable. We seemed to be mindlessly wandering, but I felt our togetherness more than ever during our walks. We’d spend hours walking along the shore in situational meditation, blissfully unaware that these moments would go down in the books as some of the most clarifying. I’d never grow out of this. To this day, I find my (twenty-five-year-old) self glancing down at the surf in hopes of coming across a shell to call home about. I walk the beach a few times a week, so these calls aren’t lacking. I find something almost every time. Maybe I just want to talk to Mommom, or maybe I truly am blessed with finding “treasures” each day I set out.

One Santa Barbara Saturday in April I was wandering the shallow waters off East Beach. From the surface looking down into the ocean I saw a perfectly round, black object in the sand. I reached for it and suddenly had a beautiful specimen in the palm of my hand. It was a sand dollar- a rare find. (Finding a whole sand dollar is the shell hunting equivalent of hitting the jackpot). My jaw dropped as I studied the surface of this gem. The geometric pattern in the center of the shell stood out among the particles of soot, ash or tar that covered it. I noticed a bit of black transfer onto my fingers. I instinctively brushed my thumb over the surface to reveal the bone-white color sand dollars usually are. My heart dropped when a chunk broke off. I gently repositioned my hand, and more pieces crumbled away. Soon, it was broken beyond recognition. I drew my palm into a tight fist and completely crumbled the rest of it before dipping my hand in the ocean to let the waves wash it all away. In that moment I realized that some things are not meant to be “had.”

I didn’t call Mommom after that. I had a fleeting feeling of inadequacy, as if this deconstruction of beauty was somehow my fault. I felt responsible for failing to preserve the beauty I was lucky enough to catch that day in the waves. I got over that feeling fairly quickly- I had no choice. I realized later that it was a grave mistake to believe that anything is mine to keep. “Who am I to assume ownership of such unexpectedly gorgeous beauty?” I asked myself, not out of spite, but out of curiosity. In that moment, I began a new dialogue with myself. It was only after allowing myself to crumble and fly away in the breeze alongside the sand dollar that I felt like I was standing solidly on my own two feet. In that moment I felt human. I could feel the life pulsing through my veins, yet I knew it could and would one day leave. I realized that this life is simply something I’m currently experiencing- it does not define me. I found myself wondering, “What defines me? If I’m not simply a composition of encounters, what constructs my soul?”

I’m still terrified of the answers, but I have begun contemplating the questions. I’m not sure there are answers to questions like those. I stood there in the surf and observed these thoughts as they ebbed and flowed through my psyche. I noticed that my thoughts behaved similarly to the rhythm of the tide. For a brief moment, the world felt quiet. Nothing needed to be accomplished and there was no one to answer to. In between thoughts, I felt an inexplicable sensation of peace. “If only I could capture this feeling and revisit it later,” I thought. I wanted to put it in a locked box and store it in the back of a drawer in my mind’s closet. I felt like an only child who never learned to share. I knew that however hard I tried, I’d never be able to hold on to a feeling. If I did find a way to capture the essence of my soul, it wouldn’t feel the same the next time I opened the box, anyway. Like the sand dollar I held for a transient moment, I knew this feeling wasn’t mine to keep. Another wave washed around my body, and my thoughts were wiped clear once again. I took my first steps toward the beach and didn’t look back as the surf crashed behind me.