The Gulf gives on its own schedule. Some weeks I swim out at sunset and the floor is bare, sand rippled and empty as a swept kitchen. I’ll surface with a shell, maybe, tucked in a pocket like a consolation prize. Other weeks I go down and there they are – pale circles scattered across the bottom like the sea emptied out a drawer. Sand dollars.
That’s when I hoot and holler in the Gulf.
I find one, and instead of coming up satisfied, I dive again. Same spot, breath held a beat longer each time, because if one washed up here, there’s probably a brother a few feet over. It’s the same instinct a dog has pawing at dirt over a bone it already knows is there – you don’t stop digging just because you found something. You dig because the finding proves the ground is rich.
My wife, Fewi, told me sternly, “You are not retired,” so I call it Sand Dollar Enterprises, back in business. She calls it junking up the garage.
She’s not wrong. There’s a shelf out there that’s turned into a small pale colony, and every one of them came up the same way – a fist closed underwater, pockets going heavy, grinning like I’d found something worth more than it is. I guess it depends on how you measure worth.
Here’s the rule, though, and it’s not a small one: I only take the bleached ones. The kind that have already lived their short flat lives on the ocean floor, died, and been picked clean and white by the sea itself before I ever got there. A live sand dollar is brown, almost furred, covered in spines that move – you can feel it moving slightly in your hand if you’re paying attention. Those I leave exactly where the current put them.
Some people hear “sand dollars” and picture me thinning them out, one dive at a time, until there’s nothing left down there. That’s not how the Gulf works either. God is still making them. Every season, more drift up, live out their time, die, bleach white in the current, and wash into reach. I’m not depleting anything. I’m just the guy who happened to notice the tide brought the mail today.
Maybe that’s the actual why of it. The hunt’s the real half of the joy – the collecting’s just what I’ve got to show for it. I love that feeling going down. Every dive is a small test of whether the Gulf is in a giving mood. Some days the answer is no, and I come up with nothing but salt in my eyes and call it fine anyway. Other days it’s yes, and I keep going back down like I might miss one lying down there waiting for me.
The garage keeps filling. Fewi just sighs. And somewhere out past the sandbar, the sea is still making more than I could ever carry home.
