While walking along the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico recently, I found myself preoccupied with shells. When not dodging jellyfish or crabs, I dipped my small, hand-held net into the water, anticipating what might come up. Sand dollars? Oysters? Buried treasure?

Instead, what I got, time after time, was shards and sand. Occasionally there might be a rock or a string of seaweed, maybe even a lone feather, but mostly it was just pieces of shells that used to be whole. After tossing several batches of remnants toward the murky water, I realized I was dismissing all the offerings that weren’t complete. If it was a broken shell, or if it was covered in barnacles, back to the murky water it went. Why was I doing that?

For a person like me, it wasn’t much of a leap for my mind to wander from broken shells to broken lives. If I were to discard every friend or family member who wasn’t whole, I’d be pretty lonely indeed. And, of course, I’d have the awkward task of heaving my own body toward the salty sea with relative regularity.

Suddenly I started looking at the broken shells in a new light. The colors were still beautiful, the shapes worth admiring. If they were people, we might label them “interesting” or “intriguing.” In college, a former boyfriend described me this way: “You’re not the kind of girl to play around with right now, but you’d be perfect to take home to my mother in a few years.” I have long been the friend with the “good personality,” so I like to think I know just how those shells felt.

Now my bowl at home is filled with shells both whole and broken, some shiny and some dull, of varied colors and shapes. As I look at the castoffs mixed in among the chosen, I am reassured that they are all just as they should be.

Amy Lyles Wilson