It is Wednesday afternoon and I went in to publish what I carefully wrote Monday. Surely I had saved those words, but not so. This is not a well-written rerun. More a sand between your toes walk on the beach. Those shells we strolled and collected at one time housed a nebulous sea animal. By the time we gathered the housing, the creature had already dried up and disappeared, only leaving, as Oliver Wendell Holmes poetically said, “thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!” Just abandoned on the beach.
I always wanted to truly find one of the large conch shells to hold to my ear and hear the song of the sea it had captured. That never happened. Scollops or mollusk shells, the semi-circular fan shaped ones, are the easiest to find unbroken. They are usually bleached white or stained a dirty brown. Some shells are named by their shape like the Turk’s cap which could be a headpiece for an Islamic man or the auger, twisted to have a purpose in a tool box. Sand dollars are special if found before they are cracked. Throw in a few shark’s teeth and you can have a summer display.
This is the summer I have the feelings of the small creature. I need the protective layer of a shell to keep the world at bay. Amazingly, as I manage to grow in spite of, I can claim a useful adaptation of a real shell. The growth occurs at the leading edge and the beginnings can be sealed off to give room to move ahead. Whatever pattern is formed is distinctively mine. Who knows, I may be a collectible someday.
So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds,
Genesis 1:21
Let Me Tell Ya 