beachwalkshellshock

Most days I spend an hour walking my dogs on the beach that is less than a mile from the apartment I have shared with my partner and his children for the last month and ten days. I fill my pockets with scallop shells and fish bones, sea glass and drift wood, pottery shards and the occasional sand dollar. I drift along the sand sometimes present, the ease or difficulty of movement registering with greater weight on the days my thoughts are thick and harder to hold back from erupting as tears or anguished utterance. When I am not burdened in this way, I notice the sea, the colors of which – greens, blues and some grey a shade I would call smoke – are unlike the sea I know – obsidian and moss and cobalt – the more northern Atlantic bays of my youth and last four years. These colors surprise me and are pleasant, though they do not move me to wonder what lies beneath that way I have always done anywhere along the unforgiving, ancient fingers of Maine’s coastline.

Nothing is strange to me and yet nothing is known. The comfort in this life is that I can walk the beach everyday and look into the sand when I cannot face the sea. I can search for small perfections that were formally the main protection for bivalves, who, while not helpless, were more limited in their means of survival than I. And perhaps it is their simplicity that I admire most. The shells I find are either intact or not and there is but one choice; I am only interested in their wholeness. At present I have twenty complete shells, ranging in size from less than a quarter inch to just over two inches and from a pale salmon color to coal. I like the reds and blacks the most. I appreciate that they fan and layer in a predicable manner, their delicacy, and that, among the varieties of shells which wash up in the tides here in New Jersey, they are somewhat rare. I like that it requires focus to see them and to determine whether they are whole before I wipe away the sand and place them gently in my pocket. I like that some days there are no whole shells, just ridges and deceivers with hair thin splits or holes drilled by predators. I like that some days, there are no scallop shells and I go home with salt brine on my glasses, tired dogs and empty pockets.

There have been many transitions in my life, each difficult in its own way, requiring me to understand myself in new and often painful ways. As I grow older, change is harder to face because what must change has become more solidly a part of who I know myself to be. Three times, I have found myself beach walking and collecting. This pattern did not occur to me until I moved here to become something I have never been – a partner and part of a family. This is also the first place I have lived not by choice, but because I cannot choose to live without the love that has brought me here. This is harder than anything I have ever done and I want to write it out because I want to remember I have done something this hard.

This is a personal voyage, but my insights may invite discussion. I am hopeful that this will happen.