Dream kept shell collection alive

by MAUREEN BRADY JOHNSON

for the News-Tribune

It was 5:30 am. I sat in a chair, writing. Not unusual for me. I like to get up early and write in peace and quiet. The hour and my activity were not unusual but the place was. I had dreamed of this place since I was in second grade and now, I was here. I shivered, not because it was chilly, but because I was writing about a lifelong dream I had finally realized.

When I was in second grade I decided to have a collection...of something. It was the thing to do in second grade. Dolls and trading cards were the most popular things to collect. "When are you going to start your collection, Maureen?" my friends would ask as they pulled Shirley Temple look-alikes out of their boxes. "Maybe this Christmas," I'd answer. But the truth was I didn't want to collect dolls or cards. I wanted to collect something unique. But I had no idea what. A few months later, a family trip would help me to discover what that special something was.

My dad took us to the Cleveland Aquarium in Wade Park. There were fish of every color and kind but the biggest attraction were the two small harbor seals that pressed their faces up against the glass and smiled at us. We didn't want to leave until my dad said, "Each of you can get something from the gift shop."

In a basket on the counter I saw them; pink as a sunrise and delicate as the thinnest glass, seashells, a gift from the sea. I decided at that moment I would collect shells. "Only one, Maureen," my dad said to me. I poured over the basket until everyone else was ready to leave. Then I chose a shell called the lightning whelk. It was elegant and long, striped with tan markings. It was my first shell. I was on my way.

A collection implies that you have more than one item and for years, that whelk remained the singular shell in my collection. I dreamed of more shells with hues of pink and pale violet, with brown lines and spots and sunset colors bursting on their surface. I wondered if my collection would ever have more than one exotic shell. I began to think of other things I could collect but a friend of my dad's kept my shell dream alive.

He had retired to Florida and sent letters to my dad describing his long walks on an island called Sanibel. He spoke of the beaches, so littered with shells that you couldn't help but step on them as you walked. The dream of going to Sanibel Island, the shelling paradise, began to grow at that very moment. I grew up with the conviction that someday, somehow, I would go there and shell. Time passed and my dream gathered dust bunnies with gray hair. But I never lost it.

It was now January, 2010, my 58th year of life. It was 5:30 a.m. in a small cottage on Sanibel Island and I was writing about dreams coming true. Writing about the day before and how I stepped on a Sanibel Island beach and took a deep breath of air that was moist and fishy. I closed my eyes and let the sun warm my face to the tips of my eyelashes. After all these years, I was HERE...really, really here.

I thought of the impossible dream of that second grader. I thought of what it meant to cherish a dream, to work hard to keep it from fading.

And I thought about how much I needed others who were willing to help a dream come true. Real believers.

What happened next might make you a believer, too.

I opened my eyes and looked down at my feet. There, in the sand, was a partially broken shell. I picked it up. I could see its inner whorls now visible in an exquisitely twisted pattern of tan and white. It was perfect in its imperfection. This shell had stood the test of time. Created in the depths of the dark sea, it had traveled to be at my feet at that very moment in time. And then I realized what I had in my hand. I had found a lightning whelk, the very first shell in my childhood collection.

When a dream comes true, even if you have worked hard to make it so, it is a gift. Standing there, with that lightning whelk in my hand, holding it just as carefully as I had held a similar shell so many years before, I said thanks. And I blessed all the dreamers who recognize the signs of a dream come true.