sea urchin

he held a heart in his hand

He held a heart in his hand. The ghostly, cordate form of a sea urchin skeleton, picked up as the tide receded by my own little urchin—five years old, blonde, sun-kissed and windswept. That day, we walked along an endless Welsh beach as the sun began to sink. The rippled surface of the sand was shining, dotted with white ovals—an influx of heart urchins, brought in by the waves. His small, sandy hand reached for mine as we strolled, eyes to the ground, searching for the perfect specimen. My sweet natural historian was keen to examine each skeleton we found, to handle it gently and wonder at it. The chosen sea urchin—his prized treasure, carried back to the campsite in a green plastic bucket—was lost, or shattered, long ago. Only my memory of the moment remains.

We never found another one, although we looked on beach after beach. Once or twice, the tide rendered up sea-smashed fragments, but a complete skeleton eluded us. The boy grew—still thoughtful, dark blonde now, and no longer reaching for my hand. Sometimes, he picks up stray pieces of smooth sea glass, but his search for sea urchins has been forgotten.

This spring, we returned to the same part of the Welsh coast, just one bay along. Many years—and many tides—had passed. The smallest of my three sons (on the day of the urchins, a newborn sleeping under a parasol) was now weeks off his tenth birthday. The boys played cricket with my husband and I walked along the shoreline, listening to their voices over the murmur of the sea, thinking of a decade gone in a heartbeat. A wave rushed in, chill across my toes. I looked down, and saw, deposited at my feet, the delicate, familiar form of a heart urchin skeleton: glowing, pale, intact. I picked it up, and carried it to where my eldest boy stood— fifteen now, tall against the dunes and laughing.

‘Do you remember the summer we found the sea urchin?’ I asked him. I placed my heart into his outstretched hand.