One in a Million

Last evening, as the sun sank low in the Easter sky, I decided to take a stroll on a local beach. I hadn’t been at my best all day. The night before, while watching Minari, I’d received a text from a friend telling me another friend had passed away.

She was a force of nature, this one—a creative whirlwind who loved nothing more than to immerse her hands in the soil. And the soil loved nothing more than the touch of her green thumb, which bloomed roses and figs and the most delicious raspberries you’ve ever tasted.

In summer, she’d leave a basket of plums on our front bench, along with a hastily written note saying, “love ya, sistah,” or, “there are lots more where these came from.” Surely, she was eager to get back to the garden.

The beach was mostly empty when I arrived—just a few distant walkers, and two little girls in dresses, dancing in the shallows. I turned north at the base of the stairs, drawn to the mud flats versus my usual stretch of sand.

My rubber boots splashed in Puget Sound as I trailed gulls and mallards and a hunting heron. Then, looking left into the slanted sun, I saw a vast plain of sea stones shimmering in the flats.

I strayed from the water’s edge and headed toward the glistening things, a hundred feet or so from the receding tide. By the time I’d covered half that distance, I could see that the cookie-sized orbs were much too flat to be stones. Some of them sat in the mud at an angle, like tiny beach umbrellas made of…what?

Moments later, I gasped at the treasure unfolding all around me. Kneeling in the wetness, I stroked one of the dark purple curves poking out of the ooze; it felt surprisingly soft—and very much alive. I could barely make out a five-petaled flower covered in muck. Sand dollars are more familiar to most of us as bleached souvenirs.

I flipped the strange urchin onto its back, which greeted me with thousands of fleshy spines flowing like waves of grass in a wild meadow.

“Love ya, sistah,” I thought. And I set the dollar back in the mud.