shells.

<Photo courtesy of Kristine Kainer Art>

We walked the beach on Saturday.  Spring was tangible as the sun beat down, warming our skin, and we smiled at the other Bostonians who had crawled out of their winter caves.  For the first time in many months, the city was cheerful, and the people happily shed their coats for new layers of sweat, t-shirts, and sunscreen.  We were our real selves again, ready to grow and adapt to the coming season.

*

We picked up shells.  Each shell had to be considered carefully; we didn't want any that were broken, or stained, or had any traces of the organism that had lived in the shell.  We compared them side by side, left most on the sand, and held onto the ones that were smooth, white, and clean.  One we threw back into the ocean, a broken shell with the organism spilling out, covered in flies.  We felt it should die in the ocean; the empty shell would wash back onto the beach in its own time.

*

Pity: "It's so sad.  She's just a shell of her former self."
Scorn: "There's nothing inside; he's just a shell of a man in a suit."
Relief: "She finally came out of her shell."

*

The shells of ocean creatures are beautiful, collected, and admired.  We are fascinated by them, easily forgetting that they are the remains of a creature that outgrew its shell and moved to another, or died, slipping out of the shell and leaving it clean and pure.  The shells become novelties, ornamental objects that we take the liberty to overlook or confiscate.  We are up high, and they lie on the sand. We take what we like.

*

We outgrow shells, move into new ones, discard the old ones, and eventually, slip away for good, leaving our shells on the beach. 

*

I was an extremely shy, uncomfortable, sensitive child.  I didn't like to be held, hugged, or touched in any way.  Small things upset me violently - not the way a child throws a tantrum for not getting its way, but the way a person becomes inconsolably sad over something that nobody else understands.  My feelings were fragile as butterfly wings, with patterns just as unpredictable.  Everything made me cry, and when I cried, I was told I was too sensitive; this made me feel like there was something wrong with me, which made me cry all the more.  By third grade I'd developed a very poor image of myself.  I felt too tall, too big, too not-blonde.  Pictures of me during this time are painfully awkward because of the way I stood, smiled, and angled myself to look as small as possible.  But I was no longer shy.  I'd moved into a new shell.

*

The new shell was roomier, but still a shell.  "Don't look at me - but laugh at my jokes!" was etched on the outside.  An amazingly adaptive shell, this one grew with me, no matter how many times I tried to outgrow it.  It seemed this would be the shell that I left on the beach.  Dark and stained, I doubted any beachcomber would want it.

*

Fortunately, someone picked me up, threw me against a rock, and broke the shell.  I was terrified to be exposed, squinting in the sunlight and realizing that I could stretch myself beyond the limits I had learned in the previous shell.  The world - and I - was so much more than I had ever imagined!  Liberation is wonderful, but also frightening.  I broke out of a dark shell - and now I was homeless.  I would have to move into an abandoned shell or start creating a new shell.  But if I stayed on the beach, at the mercy of the sand, the sun, and people, I would surely die.

*

I didn't die.  With some help, I have grown a new shell.  At times, it cracks, or becomes so tangled in seaweed that I can't see the light around me.  At times it looks very much like a shell I used to be.  But I know that if I washed up on the beach today, the shell would have ridges, lines, places where instead of breaking out, I simply grew more into myself, more into this better shell.

*

Eventually, we are all going to slip away.  People will pass by, and either reject, pocket, or simply ignore the shells left in the sun.  Even a shell of a man, a shell of a former self, or a shell where a person hid for years before coming out - even these shells deserve at least a second glance.  They are uniquely protective, housing the breathing, living thing inside, and they are incredibly fragile, at the mercy of nature, of people, of being thrown.  But everyone has one, and some people go through many before the end.  Each one tells a story, each ridge - like the rings of a tree trunk - marking our progress.  Each one has the power to tell where we've been cracked, how much we've grown, when we've been set free.  Each one is beauty, because each one is us.