December Days--Fragments, Glimpses and Pieces

Talking with old friends this week, I touched on some things I did on December days growing up in Chicago.  Usually a good December day in Chicago included 1) a freshly fallen snow, 2) a few streets with a smooth hard-packed layer of that snow and 3) some number of unsuspecting drivers crawling along those streets at a snail’s pace.  As they drove past, we’d grab the bumper and “skitch” (ski on our feet?) behind the car for as long as we could hold on.  If we collected anything, it was snowballs for throwing at our friends.  By their nature, snowballs perish and are gone with the wind and a little melting by the sun.  Oh, those days could be memorable. 

My days these days are nothing like them, but special in their own way.  A walk at the beach today quickly became a shell hunt. It was one of those times; a retreating tide, an especially calm day, lots of bright sunshine.   I have no idea which condition, if any, contributes to it, but the sand was peppered with shells.  We have a thing for the shells of the olive snail (a vastly different snail from the ones we hunted in Chicago).  The olive is the state shell of South Carolina, but we find them only rarely.  Until today, I was the only one in the family who had found an olive shell in the past seven years.  Today I found the first shell, but Sheila found three more, keeping two.  That made this a pretty good December day at the beach.  I suppose that technically these are shell fragments, some just seem to have held more of their original components as they were discarded by their inhabitants.  Olive shells come from the olive snail, a predatory mollusk (I knew you wanted to know).   They are oval, shiny and colorful, thus, they are  popular with collectors and jewelry makers--which is probably why we don't find them often, they are being picked up by early risers.   

Common as they are in the local waters, actually seeing a dolphin happens to me all too infrequently.  Just covering another base, I caught a glimpse of a dolphin, feeding close to shore, followed by a handful of pelicans diving for (probably the same) fish.  I have no idea how much fish a pelican eats per day, but I know it takes seventy-five pounds of fish to feed a dolphin each day.  My theory as to why I rarely see them at the beach--they probably need to look at places with less flesh and more fish.  What swims along our shore would not be all that tasty for a dolphin.  But still, it's a good day in December when you see a dolphin, if only for a moment.     

Another thing that we used to take for granted on our beach was a steady supply of sand dollars.  However, we were quickly educated in this regard.   Sand dollars that wash up on our shore are most often still alive, and, therefore, should be returned to the sea.  Only on a rare day do you find a sand dollar that is really dead.  So, today, of course, we found one white from the sun and completely devoid of soft tissue, thus available for us to add to our collected booty for the day.  It was missing a piece, not unlike all the shells we picked up along the way.  We aren't collectors, but we keep a few in a bowl with sand to show to visitors.  These pieces tell them some of the ocean's story.  So these pieces of shells and sand dollars came home with us, more signs of a good day at the beach.  It all adds up to a fine day in December I never imagined as I grew up.