All my life, I have been searching to find an intact sand
dollar while combing the beach during our trips to ‘the shore’. Never have I found one. When I was a teenager,
my friend brought home a bucket of
them once from Hilton Head. As she was
bleaching them in the sink, I felt nothing but jealousy as a 16-year-old. The
jealousy stemmed from the sand dollar haul rather than the fact she and her
family could afford to stay at a Hilton Head resort for a week. She offered me
one of her 1-2” Clorox smelling white gems, oversized coins really, but worth
more to me than the real thing. Now, decades later, I can’t remember if I took
one at her kitchen sink or not. They weren't my find. Just not the same…
Here I am in my 50s, and still the sand dollar eludes me!
I have found big pieces of them at times, excitedly yanking them from the sand
only to find there is no other half buried. I would still take them. How could
the sea just break them apart and discard these beauties so violently? I would
stick them in a terrarium’s sand to make it look like they were whole.
We took a long needed trip the beach last week. During
our stay, we made our obligatory gift shop trip, looking in quaint beachy shops,
and of course visiting the Wings or Waves, or Whatever chain. My husband and I
looking at T-shirts and sunglasses while my son and his girlfriend wandered
about as well. We met back up in the store here and there. Thought about
getting a hermit crab to take back to stare at daily wondering if it was still
alive or not…We left without the hermit crab and moved on.
Late that afternoon, my son, his girlfriend and I were
standing on the beach. Leaving the next morning, of course I am going to look down,
once more, for the hunt stays in my blood. This time I looked down and I could
not believe what I saw at my feet! There it was – undamaged – pristine in fact!
Yes, you guessed it! I found the sand dollar I have been looking for all my
life. Right there, with my son and his girlfriend seemingly forming an arc
around it. It didn't even need a course of bleach soaking. It was a perfectly
intact bright white SAND DOLLAR! I picked it up, looked at the smiling faces,
the two true gems on the beach, and I asked, “Did you two…?” Don’t really
remember what I said after that. It was like when an actor says they can’t
remember what they said during their Oscar acceptance speech – so caught up in
the emotion of it all. I do recall they both looked at me quizzically uttering,
“Huh..? What..? No…” as if they had no idea what I was talking about. I dropped
the questioning.
Now I can truthfully say I found a sand dollar on the
beach. But more importantly, what I really
found that late afternoon on the beach means more to me than finding what I had
been searching for off and on all my life. I found standing before me two
wonderfully adorable 20-somethings who cared that I would finally find my
elusive sand dollar.
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