the salt and the seaweed from the ocean, hearing birds, the breaking of waves, and faraway voices. I loved everything about living in Crescent Beach — except it wasn’t with Mom.
After about two weeks with Aunt Margaret, I pleaded with Mom to let me stay with Aunt Stella and Uncle Ron in Vancouver. They had four kids, and Nicky, their oldest, was my favourite cousin. But Mom figured it would be too much to ask them to take on another kid. So then I tried to get her to let me go to Golden to stay with Aunt Norma, who didn’t have a husband or kids.
“Norma is far too busy with her work at the newspaper,” Mom said. “She’d never be around to watch you.”
Exactly! That was what would have made it so perfect.
At least the new house had given Aunt Margaret something to focus on besides me. She spent most of her time painting walls or picking out flooring or window covers. If it wasn’t for that, I’d be her project. And since I started living with her, I’d discovered we hardly ever agreed on anything. Aunt Margaret thought I should be reading the classics, while I preferred mystery novels. She kept buying me icky pink and mauve outfits made of spandex to replace my comfy old hockey jerseys and skateboard T-shirts. And then she started talking about signing me up for pottery classes or guitar lessons so I could make new friends.
“Why can’t she just let me decide what to wear or what to read or who to be friends with?” I complained to my mom on the phone one day.
“I guess she’s forgotten what it’s like being young. Give her time, pet. She’ll come round.”
Aunt Margaret’s latest kick was making me do my own laundry. She said I needed to learn to look after myself. That was fine with me, because it meant she stopped coming into my room five times a day — even when there was a mountain of dirty clothes on the floor. I think she figured I’d give in when I had nothing clean to wear. But she didn’t really know me that well. Every time I left the house wearing a wrinkled T-shirt and socks that didn’t match, I could see her almost pinch her lips shut. I guess you could say I was giving her a crash course on parenting.
A few weeks after coming to live with my aunt and uncle, I got interested in collecting seashells. It started one day when I was sitting by myself at the beach. Mrs. Hobbs and her old basset hound, Chester, came along, their heads pointed toward the sand. They seemed to take no notice of the nippy southwest breeze coming in from the Pacific. I watched as the silver-haired lady stopped and bent down to examine something more closely. After brushing at some tiny object in her hand, she walked up to me as though we had known each other for ages and said, “Have you ever seen a more perfect specimen of an Ophiodermella cancellata?”
I had to agree that the white spiral-shaped shell with its delicate design was pretty, even though there was no way I could repeat its strange name.
“Well, here you are, young lady.” Mrs. Hobbs placed the shell in my hand. “This can be the beginning of your collection. And the nice thing about shell collecting is it’s something you can do by yourself or with a friend.” Then she smiled and continued down the beach with Chester waddling along.
After that I did start my own shell collection. And whenever Mrs. Hobbs and I found ourselves at the beach at the same time, we combed the sand together, looking for more unique shells. Crescent Beach was covered with limpets, and so far I had managed to find four different species. I also had five types of snails, two different butter clams, a Pacific gaper, and cockles galore. But my favourite so far was the Adanson’s lepton with its pearly pink centre and purplish-red fringe. I was planning to make a necklace with the shells for Mom when I collected enough.
As soon as Aunt Margaret noticed I was interested in shells, she bought me a book called Shells of the Pacific Ocean. It had lots of beautiful pictures. At first I was excited about the book. But then I realized it was her way of taking control again — making shell collecting into a “learning opportunity.”
“You should label the shells in your collection with their common and scientific names,” she suggested one day. “Then for fun you could look up their Greek and Latin origins.”
Right! That sounded like about as much fun as watching twenty-year-old reruns of Mr. Rogers. Snore!
Whenever my aunt interfered, I tried to remember she meant well. But I’d found the best thing was to stay out of her way as much as possible. So when I wasn’t down at the beach collecting shells, I wandered past the little shops and up and down the quiet streets. West Beach had lots of fancy houses, like the ones along O’Hare
Lane. They had names hanging on signs out front like Swallow Hallow or Komokwa. I liked the name on the old Tudor house the best — Happy Haven. Sometimes there were garden parties with ladies in long dresses and men in suits drinking from tall, elegant glasses. No one seemed to notice when I stopped to watch.
The houses in East Beach, where I lived, were smaller. Most were cottages, built long ago, when people only came to Crescent Beach for their holidays. My aunt and uncle’s house was nearly seventy years old and used to be a one-bedroom getaway. A previous owner added a second floor with three bedrooms.
One morning Aunt Margaret got the idea I should come with her to the decorating store and choose the paint colour for my bedroom. But I wasn’t planning on living there for long and I certainly didn’t want anything to do with picking out paint colours. I snuck out when she was in the shower and made my way to the end of McBride and out to the beach at Blackie’s Spit. I liked early mornings on the beach the best. Hardly anyone was ever there.
A startled blue heron lurched awkwardly into the sky just as I jumped over a log and plunked myself onto the sun-warmed sand. I watched two seagulls fight over a cracked open clamshell, while two more circled silently overhead. I wondered how long it would take for the emptied clam to become tiny bits of crushed shell scattered all over the beach. On the other hand, it might go home in some kid’s sand pail as part of a shell collection like mine, or become decorated with paint and glitter and sit on a windowsill.
On that morning Mrs. Hobbs and Chester were out for a walk at the end of the spit. When she noticed me, she waved and marched in my direction. The wind whipped at strands of silver hair that had escaped from under her Tilley hat. And as the old dog waddled behind her, his tummy nearly dragged along the sand. Mrs. Hobbs lived on Sullivan Street, just down from Skipper’s Fish and Chips. She once told me Chester liked to spend his free time sniffing out leftovers by the dumpster.
“Hello, Peggy. You wouldn’t believe the treasure I’ve been gathering this morning!” Mrs. Hobbs said, nearly out of breath. She opened her palm and presented several long, thin tubular shells that were almost translucent, except for their pattern of tiny flecks. “These are tusk shells. With the tide out I managed to find these few in the mud and silt off the end of the spit. The ancient Coast Salish traditionally used them for decoration and trading.”
“Trading?” I knew a shrewd bargainer never appeared too eager, so I tried not to look excited. “I’ll trade you something for them.”
“Hmm. What have you got that I might want?” Mrs. Hobbs’s eyes were smiling.
“How about some of my best Adanson’s leptons?” The tusk shells would be perfect for the necklace I wanted to make for Mom.
“That sounds pretty enticing. However, I was thinking more along the lines of, say, lawn cutting ... next Saturday?”
“Sure. It’s a deal! Thanks.” I snatched the five delicate shells from her hand.
The day I got those tusk shells from
