When I was growing up we spent many vacations on the south gulf coast of Florida in a little town called Bonita Springs. My aunt and uncle had a condo there so my family bought one in the same building a couple floors below theirs. The balcony looked over the gulf and if I swam to far from out, my mom would yell from the balcony for me to come back in. You could be drifting on a raft and hear her yell, “Don’t get off the raft, there are stingrays under you.” The water was that clear. The water being so clear made it ideal for looking for sand dollars and king conch’s.
With four kids, it’s no wonder that my mom would disappear down the beach alone mostly at low tide. She’d walk slowly, occasionally dipping down to pick up a shell, rinse it in the water and move on. She was good at spotting the treasures among the piles of crushed shells or along the sand break where shells got caught. I was a tween when I started going with her. Not so much with her but ahead or behind her. When she’d find something, she’dwave me over and tell me what kind of shell it was. When I found something, I’d run to her for approval and identification. If we didn’t know what it was, we’d pull out the Florida Shell book and find it.
Soon I was a moody teenager and I’d head down the beach alone at low tide to look for shells. I have to admit, I was mostly looking for boys and shells were the afterthought. Still, when I came home, I’d show my haul to my mom and we’d decide which ones were keepers and which we’d toss back to the less experienced shellers who roamed the beaches. We’d laugh when they’d pick up something we just dropped. We felt like experts after roaming these beaches for several years.
My mother had found every type of shell or so she thought. One day a local showed her a flat scallop shell. She called it a “Sea Fan” They were almost impossible to find in one piece. Flat on one side and curved on the other. My mother became obsessed with the flat side of this shell. It was her Holy Grail of shells. In all those vacations at the beach I only remember her finding three unbroken ones. She had us all looking for them but I thought they were boring looking so my search was more to please her than me.
In january of 2018 my mom was diagnosed with Stage four liver cancer. She been excited about her weight loss and didn’t imagine it had anything to do with her being sick. So what if she was tired all the time, she wore a size 0 at Chico’s! A four of her children took turns visiting her. Sometimes our visits would overlap and she loved having her chickies around. By March she was getting weaker. In April my brother was visiting and my sister was picking me up from the airport to see mom. In the car, we talked about her lingering. My dad had passed 3 years before we joked about him tapping his wrist like he did so often in life saying “Come on Wynelle, it’s time to go!” Five minutes later my brother called to say she had passed. She hadn’t waited for us to get there.
When we all gathered for her memorial, we also took stock of what she left behind. Among her treasures was a lamp full of shells she’d found over the years, a shell mirror that I had made for her and a box of her very best shells including the “Sea Fans”. Bonita Spings and Naples had been her happy place, with the calm warm water and white sugar sand beaches. My sisters and I also inherited a timeshare vacation plan from her. Last April, my sisters and I decided to go to Marco Island, just south of my mom’s favorite Florida town of Naples.
Now my mom would have been so happy to know that we three sisters were going on a beach vacation together. We had not done that since we were very young. The last time we were all together was at my mom’s funeral. One sister lives in Baltimore, the other outside Atlanta and I am the far flung sister in Texas. It hasn’t been easy for us to ditch our responsibilities and vacation together. There have been times in our past when we have not even liked each other all that much. As we get older, we recognize the value of family and memories so this vacation was important to us.
We were all excited to get to the beach and see what the shelling situation was like. As soon as we got settled in our condo, we hit the white sand looking for treasures. We walked a bit and Suzanne found a conch in shallow water. She plucked it from the sand and the long slug like critter arched out of the shell. Oops. Can’t take that one, against the law to harvest live animals. She put it back. This scene repeated itself several times. Lauri, my oldest sister, had wandered off and was picking up scallop shells in black or gray tones. I went for the pink and orange ones. Suzanne finally found an empty conch. Back at the condo we joked that we needed to say a prayer to mom for some shelling help because we hadn’t found much.
The next morning at low tide, Suzanne and I set out again. Remember, we need to ask mom for help, I said. We both looked heavenward and asked mom to guide us to the good shells. It wasn’t long before Suzanne found an empty conch then another. I started seeing shells that i had missed the day before. We walked the beach until our pockets were full.
I went out alone the next morning. “Thanks mom for the interesting shells yesterday. Now how about a nutmeg, or a tulip shell?” I knew I shouldn’t be greedy but it was worth the ask. It wasn’t long before I found the nutmeg and another. A little farther down I found a live crown conch in the water. I took some photos and gently returned it to the shallows. I’d seen some dedicated shellers with their water shoes and mesh bags, they were spread out along the stretch of beach. That’s when I found my tulip shell. They are fragile so it’s tough to find one unbroken. When I got back to the condo, I unloaded my pockets and impressed my sisters. “It was all mom, I swear. I asked her for help and she guided me.”
The week went on like this, all of us finding shells with our mom’s spirit guiding us.
The last day at the beach, I took a long walk. It wasn’t low tide but it wasn’t high tide either. The crowds were out under blue or green umbrellas. Families were building sand castles at the edge of the shell line. Now on these beaches, there is a shell line of crushed and broken shells that get stuck there when the tide comes in. There is a sweet spot to walk when the tide comes in between the shell line and the squishy sand.. I like to walk here because I can see shells in the water or on the beach. I was more walking than shelling as I headed back to the condo occasionally glancing left and right on the ground looking for treasures. I was dodging children running with buckets of water for sand castles and trying not to get in the way of people with beach chairs by the water.
My thoughts were of my mom and I silently thanked her for the gift of the timeshare and the opportunity to become closer with my sisters.
I glanced down and did a double take. I stopped, reached down and plucked a shell from the top of the crushed shells along the water. Casually I walked to the water to wash it off. My mother’s Holy Grail of shells. It was a perfect zigzag shell, what my mom called the “sea fan”. I had not even been looking for it!
I cradled the shell in my hand as tears clouded my vision. She was there. She was with us, with me. I was still shelling with my mom. My sisters were as shocked as I was by my find but they’d felt it too. Lauri as she floated in the warm gentle gulf, Suzanne as she found conch after conch then returned most of them for others to find at the end of the week. As I gently wrapped my finds to take home, I knew mom would never give up an opportunity to go shelling even in spirit.
Nell Carroll Photography 