For several years my family has travelled to a small island on the Gulf Coast side of Florida for beach walks and grouper sandwiches. The sand there feels like pastry flour and is laced with a million shells from cockles and lightening whelks to rough scallops and calico clams. If you’re really lucky, you may even find a sand dollar or a dried-up starfish. Shelling takes time and patience. My largest shells are from Irene’s house. All the best shells wash up on her little beach. Irene and my Mum have been fiends since childhood and no visit to Anna Maria is complete without a drive over the bridge to her weathered clapboard on Longboat Key. Most of the shells have some imperfection –– a small crack, a chip or some discolouration –– but they’re still so beautiful. This time, I found two large Southern Quahogs, chalky white with rough lines on the outside, and a fighting conch (the ones with the jagged spires at the top). I also brought home a bag of broken seashells; teeny, tiny fragments that I’ll piece together to make something whole. Eventually, I hope to take shells collected over many years and mount them on some lovely fabric, but in the meantime, they live in pockets and drawers and inside my shoes.
