She-shells, Seashells
by Dana Y. Wu
Down a few rows of beach chairs, I notice a young mom calling her boys over from the sand bar.
“Such a gorgeous day!” I say, reaching into my beach bag for Repel-100, an industrial strength insect repellent. The familiar cries of shore birds mingle with the insects buzzing around the yellow beach umbrellas.
Her older son looks at me suspiciously. Even in this bubble of socially distant safety on pristine Sanibel Island, we are still relearning the choreography of being in public.
“Where are you visiting from?” I ask and discover we’re from neighboring towns in Westchester. We’ve been coming to this famous shelling beach since our four kids were little, when seeing the tall, plastic dispenser filled with Fruit Loops at the hotel’s continental breakfast buffet was like a multi-colored beacon of vacation joy. This year, it’s just the three of us escaping the December snow and the loneliness imposed by remote school and work from home COVID restrictions.
I fall into an easy chit-chat with her, maybe oversharing with helpful suggestions for kayaking and dolphin spotting activities for their family’s first visit here. She peers through her tinted Ray-Bans at her boys running back and forth in the lapping low-tide Gulf water. They’re mashing their toes in the sand to uncover cockles and clams with their bi-valves shut tight.
“It’s alive! Toss it back!” Their mom explains there’s a soft mollusk living inside the seashell. She wipes her wet hands on her khaki shorts.
The boys hunt for perfect shells, collecting the bounty washed ashore into different piles. My own kids had filled neon green sand pails full of beachcombing treasures. Hauling the shells up to the hotel’s outdoor sink station, we’d matched the crimped edges of the pastel scallops, the whorls of whelks, the close of the lettered olive, the specked patterns of junonia against the specimens on the laminated Bailey-Matthew Shell Museum poster. Then, making sure the shells were empty, we’d pick out a few favorites, returning the rest to the water, clear to the sandy bottom.
When my husband Mike and Catherine, our youngest child, return with their pockets full of seashells, I’ll scrub and boil them clean to hand-carry home in our luggage as souvenirs, folded in between paper towels.
The mom spritzes sunscreen on her boys. I’m about to recommend the crunchy grouper kid’s meal at Timbers, but instead, I holler, “Safe travels.” I flee the beach, using my hat to swat away the pesky no-see-ums, so tiny they sail through the mesh of window screens. The little brutes have made my DEET marinated limbs into a blood-sucking buffet.
*
Inside the hotel room, I smear hydrocortisone cream on the itchy red welts, trying not to scratch. The Wi-Fi kicks in. My phone pings with a Class of 1991 group notification. There’s a birth announcement from Beth. We had been close—all those giggly, giddy late-night conversations in our freshman dorm when she was blue-eyed, freckled and curly-haired girl from Texas. We chatted at our 25th college reunion as if no time had lapsed.
Her first baby? I stare at her post. The sheer physicality of pregnancy and birthing seems impossible to me, now at fifty-one.
What had I missed on her timeline? I scroll back to March 2021, the confusing start of the COVID vaccine rollout. Beth’s been an adventurous foodie since her junior year abroad in Japan and posts about fabulous meals, foraged from all over New York City:
“savory French crepes with merguez and an artful mustard squiggle ”
“Alton Brown’s shakshuka with homemade urfa biber harissa”
“forbidden rice, lotus root with scallions, and a semi-spicy fried tofu dish plus a special yuzu mousse cake from Patisserie Tomoko”
“韭菜饺子”
There are no obvious clues, no pickles and ice-cream pictures on her timeline, of nourishing her cherished dream. Then, images of Beth’s full, pear-shaped body illuminated in the welcoming tunnel of the Brooklyn Botantical Garden’s Winter Cathedral’s warm light.
I hover over the post of her swaddled son and add a sparkling heart reaction to the comment, “Mazel Tov!” There are 909 friends’ reactions— wow, love, like, care, a smile emoji hugging a heart.
*
I chat with Beth via Facebook Messenger:
“He’s a miracle baby. We’ve been trying to conceive for fourteen years.”
“Every healthy baby is a miracle!”
“We just got through a Tasmanian devil feeding…otherwise, he’s an angel. I’m sure you can remember.”
Beth’s fifty-one. Privately pregnant until delivery, she chose to shield herself from inevitable questions, unknown COVID risks and unsolicited advice.
I was older than 35 when I had Catherine, my youngest child, and thus medically defined as “advanced maternal risk.” Catherine is about to get her driver’s permit. As I’ve aged, I have to remind myself to be patient and excited for her high school years. It will be her first time to be behind the wheel, to squirm through our awkward talk about consent and sexual activity, to hold on through the roller-coaster drama of toxic friend groups, swooning first dates and the grind of AP classes.
Beth doesn’t know that I’ve had four full-term pregnancies and two miscarriages. I felt like vomiting for months, beyond morning sickness, with each baby. I was treated with insulin for gestational diabetes. I remembered my anxiety at weekly sonogram appointments. Laying on the examination table in our hospital’s high-risk maternal-fetal medicine wing, I’d gripped Mike’s hand, waiting for test results. Vulnerable with every poke and prod, I watched the grainy images flickering on the monitor and worried, “Is the baby OK?”
We exchange frequent messages and I ask how she’s doing. “Ask for help when you need it,” I say, “self-care is health care.” I add lots of red hearts to posted pictures of her tender baby, hoping Beth doesn’t feel alone or exhausted, her body — hormonal, nursing and sleepless.
*
Zuò yuè zǐ (坐月子), I tell Beth, literally means “to sit the month.” Throughout that first month after childbirth, I had followed the Chinese tradition of post-partum care. Herbs, seeds, goji berries, ginger and bitter roots are brewed to make soups and teas. The new mother’s body is fortified with specially, perhaps superstitiously, cooked foods to increase milk production, balance the hormones, heal tissues and build stamina for the full-time job of motherhood. Even if I didn’t like the taste of their medicinal concoctions, I couldn’t turn away the nurturing of those wise women in my family, caring for my naked bosom and my infant.
Pigs’ feet—or hoof or trotter—and pigs’ knuckles are steeped in two-kinds of vinegar, ginger, wine and anise and boiled in an earthenware pot with a handle and a lid. Cooled and stored, it is salted, boiled again over a few weeks until the gelatinous tissue falls off the bone and the whole house smells of the fat, tendons, ligaments, cartilage, muscle all melting away into a pungent, thick syrup like black blood. Slightly sweet, it is reheated and served, with hard-boiled eggs—peeled and submerged—to visiting relatives. They’ve come to see the new baby and later, offer their help with laundry or distracting my other children. As in the Chinese custom, the relatives politely taste the concoction but demurely refuse. It’s prepared so carefully to nourish and strengthen the new mother.
With my firstborn in 1997, I had obeyed cautionary advice from my mother, grandmother, and aunts to avoid cold temperatures, cold food, cold drafts on ankles, wrists and neck. But I put my foot down when it came to not bathing nor washing my hair. Living in New York with indoor heating, plentiful hot water, and hair dryers, I just had to take a shower. Especially since the breastfeeding let-down reflex that released my flow of milk, spouting like a faucet on the side where the baby nursed while I held a towel beneath the other dripping nipple.
After the second baby came, I no longer wore a hat, a scarf and protective gloves to avoid the blast of cold wind when I opened the refrigerator door, in hopes of staving off future problems in my joints.
I ate their pigs’ feet, drank their soup, sipped their tea, kept out the cold. No arthritis yet but sometimes, my left knee wobbles unexpectedly.
*
A few days later when I’m back in Chappaqua, I paste a perfectly intact calico scallop, plucked from Sanibel Island’s crushed carpet of millions of shells, onto a notecard —Welcome to the World, 2021—and enclose it with a gift for Beth’s healthy baby boy. On my phone, I send yellow face emojis, winking with puckered lips, blowing kisses.
“Enjoy every minute,” I tell Beth. “Count his toes every day.”
Dana Y. Wu is a 2024 MFA graduate of MFA at Manhattanville University, where she works as a Learning Specialist. She was awarded MVICW Summer Conference Author Fellowships, the Sr. O’Gorman Scholarship, NYS Summer Writers Institute Scholarship. and workshop scholarships at the Hudson Valley Writer Center, A Public Space, Write or Die, and The Shipman Agency. She is honored to be selected as a 2025 Ragdale Artist-in-Residence.
Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, and sign up for our mailing list.