Inkwells and mermaid's purses

Inkwells and mermaid's purses

Mermaids purses or devils purses, or what my father called sea rats are actually egg casings from sea life such as sharks. Sometimes they are called skates. You can often find them dried up on the beach, little black pouches with four extended arms on both ends of the pouch. It seems to me no mermaid worth her salt would have a black purse.

Where I grew up they littered the beach like bits of fisherman's ropes and the ever present white javex bottle floats. One of them so close to nature, the other so far away.  I grew up in a beautiful, but certainly not, pristine place. 

I rarely see them now. Once in the early spring I was walking with my friend Heather on the marshy edge of the Bay of Fundy and she found one and gave it to me. A little gift of nature. I keep it on my bookshelf and it reminds me of childhood and solitude. So often I walked alone on that beach in Freshwater where I grew up. And sometimes it makes me think of Heather.

But truthfully, it is the offer of another gift from Heather that really makes me think of her and who she is. It was an offering that I could not accept.

A year after the mermaids purse Heather and I, and two other friends, were walking on a huge white sandy beach in Northern New Brunswick. The tide was out and it felt like it was a kilometre wide, and three times as long. It was not yet summer, though the sky was bright and blue and the wind blew our big baggy sweaters so they looked like parachutes lifting us. That morning we walked for at least an hour looking down at our feet to see what might have risen from the sand. 

Heather reached down and lifted an old pottery ink well up into her hands. It was about three inches high, soft beige, with not a cap on it. It was perfect. I told her so again and again. We imagined where it might have come from, off a ship a hundred years ago or from one of the cottages that were built up along the shore. I was so happy for her.  I always feel that finding something beautiful on the beach is like a personal message to you. An icon left there for you to find. 

We went for a drive along the north shore and had lunch and enjoyed our day. We all forgot about the beautiful inkwell. We did a bit of shopping and gathered a few treasures of our own to take home. I bought homemade caramel sauce and salt fish to remind me of the trip.

We were all staying together in a cottage and I being the princess that I am, had my own room. I would often retreat to it to write or read or even just rest. Three days with a group pf women is a lot for me no matter how good of friends we are. I like to retreat. I am retreating now as I write you this letter. It is a thing with me. 

Shortly before supper Heather came into my room with the inkwell in her hand. She spoke quietly and softly, but with conviction as she always does. Her palm held out the treasure and she said, “Deanne, you are a writer I would like to give you this, because I know you find it beautiful, and it would have more meaning for you. “

And I wanted it but I knew it did not belong to me. It was hard to refuse because I loved it so and it felt like a little miracle. But it was heathers miracle, and Heathers story. And so I told her, “I want it but it is not mine, it belongs to you.”

And of course her offering it to me meant more than the thing itself. And I told her that too. And she understood. And the next time I went to her house for supper it was on the sideboard. And in a way we both owned it now, that little inkwell, a lock on our friendship.