“I want to unfold. I don't want to stay folded anywhere” Rilke
Each winter break, I visited my grandparents in Florida. Years of shelling in Palm Beach. I'd always searched for an O'Keefian shape, graceful and feminine, slender and bony, like a dancer. It began at fourteen when there were still homegrown structures made with found objects from the Atlantic. Glass balls, water worn wood, shell paths. Now those beaches are rowed with condos, the ocean mired with plastic and debris, the once abundant gifts less generous, less varied...
In January of 2006, I was visiting my parents who now winter not far from where my grandparents lived. A cold spell left the beach empty of people, windswept, not a shell to be found. I was forty-six, unhappy in my marriage of twenty-three years but unable to find the courage to leave.
I walked with the wind against me, sand gusting at my calves, feet numbed, eyes scanning as I had taught myself to do over the years. In my youth, I'd searched, neck bent like a heron, effortful, anxious not to miss out, a kind of greedy determination to find treasure. In my twenties and thirties, I moved more slowly, taking in the water, the light, the shells. In my forties, I was learning to trust that I would find what I was searching for because it would find me...
Looking out at the horizon that day, the waves rising, the water forbidding, words gathered: You will figure this out. You will leave your marriage. You will find your way. Suddenly there it was, a small piece of shell revealed, exposed, waiting. A surge of excitement as I lifted it out from under, the shape I'd been searching for since I was a young girl. I plunked down in the sand holding the graceful stem. It was an offering, it was an omen. It sits, now, in my living room, nearly twelve years and two houses later. I did figure it out. I did leave my marriage. I have found my way.