Seashells

            Gulf Shores, Alabama was the destination of many of my family’s vacations as a child. It’s not extremely glamourous, but it was affordable and warm so it fit our description of the perfect spot.  I remember leaving extremely early in the morning when it was still dark with every single inch of space in the trunk taken up by our suitcases.  The agonizingly long car ride always put everyone in an awful mood, but as soon as we stepped out of the car and saw the beach it all seemed to go away. 

            My mom has always loved looking for seashells.  That’s the only thing she will spend her time doing if she is at the beach.  I loved going with her and taking sand castle buckets full of the shells back to our room.  We would sort through them and pick out which seashells were worthy of being taken back home to Missouri with us. 

One year the seashell selection was especially small.  My mom and I looked early in the morning to late at night, but we could not seem to find anything special.  I had my heart set on finding an huge, amazing, beautiful seashell to take back home with me as a souvenir, so my mom decided to take matters into her own hands. She went to one of the nearby souvenir shops and bought a huge conch shell.  She buried it close to the exit of our condo so it wouldn’t accidently get washed away or discovered by another seashell hunter.  She later took me out to hunt for this too good to be true seashell.  We started digging, but had no luck finding the shell.  My mom started to get worried that we would not find it, but about 20 minutes into our hunt we finally found it.

I think I was more excited about finding that shell than I’ve been for anything else in my life.  My mom let me believe that we just happened to find that shell by chance for several years, but eventually told me how the shell really ended up in our possession.  It was kind of like the moment you find out Santa isn’t real.  It kind of loses a little bit of the magic.