A Seashell

When I was a child, my father held this very shell to my ear and told me I would hear the sea in it. I listened, and I heard the sea.

Perhaps it required a child’s faith, which I then had in abundance and no longer do—because I listened just now with my dear hearing ear and didn’t hear a thing.

Nevertheless, I am struck by the magnificence and sheer beauty of this object. I am touched by the mystery of its origin, and by its astonishing longevity in my life. A calcium carbonate casing once connected to a living creature—an Atlantic whelk, perhaps?—how did it become a decorative artifact in a railroad flat in Brooklyn in the 1950s? Did my father pick it up on some distant beach in his youth and carry it home?

And of all the many lost, broken, and forgotten objects I have known or possessed, how is it that this one has survived decades of moves and changes, including a stint in Chicago and a cross-country migration?

It was presumptuous of me to take it. I believe that my siblings might have also laid claim on it, but early on I lifted it and carried it off, never asking or explaining, and it has been with me ever since, wherever I have gone.

I have written in the past about the randomness of what survives, about the curious colonies of stuff that cling to us, even those who try to travel light. But this seashell is a consciously chosen artifact, and a treasured one. In the elegance of its DNA, there is something life affirming.

And there is comfort in the sweet memory of my father that it evokes, and of faith. In its constancy, there is respite from chaos. And even if I have lost the ability to hear the muted roar of the ocean from within it, it still speaks to me of miracles.