Ever heard of The Church of the Old Mermaids? It was founded by my favorite author, Kim Antieau, and I'm a firm devotee. Old Mermaid legend has it that the desert used to be covered in ocean. That ocean must have come all the way to Ohio because we've been finding shells in our garden. The one above is a shell impression in a stone. A fossil? I don't know, but it's gorgeous, and it's become part of our garden altar now.
The shell I uncovered today while digging up some more lawn. Its graceful inward curves are filled with dirt, but Annie kept insisting that she could hear the ocean and that I should hear it too. Later, she said she heard a voice coming from the shell. I asked her what it was saying. She whispered in my ear, "she sells seashells by the seashore." LOL Reminds me of Sister Laughs a Lot Mermaid...
I may not have heard the ocean in the shell, but I somehow hear it in the trees. Not the ocean, exactly, but Lake Erie, where I am most at home. There is a very distinctive rustling of the wind in the limbs of our Mama Maple that instantly transports me back to those days of my childhood and teenage years when I could hear the lake lap at the shore from my bedroom window. Oh, how I miss home! Thank you, Old Mermaids, Old Sea, for giving me these little gifts...
2 comments:
Awwww! Wow. This certainly made my day, month, year. How profound and beautiful! And it sure looks like a seashell to me.
Thanks for sharing!
Love,
Kim
P.S. Could you write me? I want to ask you about posting what you wrote me on my Church of the Old Mermaids site, along with the pic of your daughter holding the seashell to her ear. My email is kim at kimantieau dot com.
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