Minutia

Born to beachcomb

Every time I pick up an ordinary box of 32 count wooden kitchen matches I think about my most treasured possession as a kid. 

My older brother used to collect hockey cards and arrowheads and for the longest time I couldn't figure out what to collect.  Every kid in our neighborhood collected something. The girl next door had shelves of horses.  All the boys seemed to have boxes of valuable rocks and stacks of baseball cards.  I tried wheat pennies.  It was convenient because pennies were the discarded, unloved coins in my house.  My brother used to toss them into my room yelling "pennies from heaven."  Non-wheat pennies were saved and spent at Andy's Variety Store where I'd stand on tiptoe to choose bulls-eyes, root beer barrels, squirrel nuts and Maryjanes from the wooden Coke bottle box that sat on the countertop.  Today the remaining unloved wheat pennies are buried somewhere in my son's room.

Now the red, gold and blue "strike on box" matchbox has another story.  No one I knew had a collection as small or unique as mine.  My entire collection was contained in that one little box.

I am convinced I was born to beachcomb.  While other kids dug and built in the sand I would crouch for hours along the curved lines of the receding waves' footprints, eyes scanning for little shells.  I remember that I was eight and it was my first summer in Maine when I made my first find.  Sifting through, I typically found mussels, clams, limpets, slipper and periwinkle shells, all no bigger than a fingertip.  I loved to bring them home and glue them to small pieces of driftwood to give as gifts and decorate my bureau.  One day stooped, wind-tangled hair, shoulders browning, I found an intact tiny sand dollar!  How could something so small and delicate survive the immense power of the ocean?  A sand dollar smaller than a penny!

If I found one, I could certainly find others.  It became my quest, my passion.   Before the summer's end the cardboard matchbox my mother emptied and gave me was filled with nineteen mini sand dollars.  All my friends were fascinated and frequently asked to see them.  I displayed them for a while until a friend accidentally broke one.  Back in the box and tucked into my sock drawer for safekeeping. 

Throughout high school and college I kept them.  My kids have even had the pleasure of seeing them some years ago, numbers diminished to eleven through the hustle and bustle of life.  The last time I saw them was the summer of 2001 as we packed and prepared our house for the addition of a second floor.  A renovation that nearly left us homeless because of poor timing and a wicked mother nature, I certainly could not let a matchbox full of some old shells upset me.

This past Saturday night I was on my Maine beach alone, walking and drinking it all in.  I had long given up searching for replacement tiny treasures, as it only seemed to result in a stiff neck.  Just as the sun was setting and I was racing to the creeks to get some good pictures I decided to look one more time amid the familiar sands.  One quick and fervent upward heavenly plea, "oh please, just one" I looked down and what did I find?  Myself.  Again.