The Shell

“Yes! I see something,” she said.  “I’m just going to dig right in.  Hang on.”

And she did.  She dug right in with needle and tweezers.  I gripped the sides of the table, tried to remain still on the crinkly roll of butcher-block paper they scroll out for each new patient.

After a few long seconds, she said, “Got it!” then dropped the thing into a stainless steel bowl with a tinny clink.  And with that sound I felt two months of tension release from a wound just right of the ball of my right foot.  The thing, a little spine of calcium carbonate – half the length of my pinky nail, had hitched a ride from a South American beach all the way up the east coast to the Green Mountains of Vermont.  Dr. Hannah came around the table and handed me the bowl.  I looked at the little white sliver, and tried to hate it.  But I couldn’t.  Finally, she said, “Well, that’s the last bit of Ecuador in you.” 

Mollusks craft their own shells by manufacturing their own nifty two-step epoxy out of proteins and minerals.  Unlike the shells of tortoises, seashells – like the ones built by clams and oysters for example –

 are not comprised of living cells complete with blood and vessels and nerves; rather, mollusks sculpt their armored homes out of proteins secreted from the “mantle” – which comes from the Latin word for cloak, a folded covering around the spineless little creature.  This “protein matrix” forms the molecular undergirding, and it dictates the structure and shape of the shell.  Then the crafty bivalve secretes minerals, usually calcium carbonate, to fill in the hard material, and this accounts for 95% plus of shell material.  For Genus Spondylus, sometimes called the spiny oyster, this means forming sharp katana-like needles protruding from the center point, an excellent defense.  One that I stepped right into.

The doctor’s words hung there, the irony unfolding in my head like a map.  We – my wife and two children – had been back from a year-long endeavor on the equator for just a few weeks.  The surprising hangover of culture shock would not wear off for months, but this little operation was the official start of the process for me.  In Ecuador, we had lived in the Andes for nine months of our sojourn.  After pulling our children from their school programs, we had decided to travel beyond the weekend forays we’d been making.  We had spent those nine months making a home and meeting people – establishing roots.  I taught a semester of English in a little university and my wife practiced massage therapy, mostly on evangelical gringos.  Yet the longer we stayed, the more obligated we felt to see everything that we possibly could before returning to the states.  In short, our purpose shifted from inward to outward.

After a few weeks of travel, we returned to our little apartment in the Andes.  Once we returned, however, we realized that without our children in school, there was no reason for us to be in the same place for the two remaining months of our stay.  Our sense of purpose had already hopped a bus to Quito.  Plus our house in Vermont was rented for two more months, key to our economic survival for the year.  So, as we made many of our decisions in Ecuador, we moved on a whim (and a little research) to a small fishing/surfing town on the Pacific coast for a month – to learn how to surf, to experience a new place.  The third day we were there, wading out for a morning swim, I stepped squarely on Spondylus. 

For those last two months in Ecuador, I rolled my foot from outside in to avoid the shooting pain of that little shell.  Every once in awhile, I’d try to dig it out myself, unsuccessfully.  Still, I’d run, surf, bike, and hike daily.  I had to train for a summit attempt on Cotopaxi, an iconic glaciated volcano south of Quito, rising up over 18,000’.  My friend Pete and I had scheduled the climb for August, just two weeks before we’d return to the states.  So I had to move.  And to move, I had to roll my foot.   I’d run the beach, five miles a day – in running shoes.  Ultimately, Pete and I were turned back 900’ from the summit by an ice storm and altitude sickness, but my shell also made it to 17,000’. 

Back home at sea-level, I immediately set to work: gardening, cutting brush, putting up wood for winter – and painting houses, something I’ve done for twenty-five years now.  Between school years, I paint – which helps to support a bicycle habit I’ve developed.  I’d hiked and run and cycled with that shell in my foot, but finally having to stand on an aluminum ladder, on the balls of my feet concentrated the pain in new ways.  I knew I finally had to go see a doctor.  I kept to the idea that it would work itself out, but it didn’t.  It wasn’t going to come out by itself on a wave of puss and blood – it needed a midwife: Dr. Hannah.

Of course, Ecuador is in me still, long after the physical effects of a spiny oyster shell wound and a greater capacity for absorbing oxygen at altitude – any place a person spends a year is going to be in him, especially a foreign place.  The word foreign is derived from the Latin word fores or door, after all – it’s anything outside your door.  Experience is getting out the door, wherever it is, and growth.  Like the formation of seashells, which must continually expand outward to accommodate the growth of mollusks, experience helps us expand out from our centers.  And the more we get away from ourselves, the more we understand when we return.