double sunrise shell

I've only seen this shell once in all of my beach trips...I think it was when the boys and I were at Rehoboth and I saw all kinds of shells that trip.  I now think of them as gifts to always remind me of the solitude and peace of the beach.  They sit throughout my house and it is like they always call me back. They remind me of the peace I find at the shore.  Tomorrow I am heading east to the shore and can not wait for all this books reminds me.  The book is "Gift from the Sea" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

This shell is a rare one.  Both sides are exactly the same.  They are identical to each other.  You wonder how it survived the pounding of the waves.  To Anne it reminds her of relationships.  How appropriate for me this week when I celebrate the two year anniversary of finding out about Mark.  Both sides are perfect and aligned with each other...just like at the start of a relationship.  The first part of any relationship is pure.  Perfect.  But we know they don't continue like that.  They get tossed and pitched with life's storm and sometimes they break apart like this shell easily does sometimes.  But to find one intact is such a special gift.  To find one whole and true...that has survived the tossing and churning of life...it a testament to a relationship.  Two people listening to each other...two shells meeting each other, making one world between them.  No other is in perfect unity of that instant. 

I am assuming Anne's husband or maybe she has had an extramarital relationship because she refers to how a love affair cannot bring back a sense of identity.  Another relationship is just the emotion of that first pure relationship...all of them get old and functional at some time. It may be good today but it will get old like the last one.  She speaks from experience when she talks how some relationships can never recover once the shell has been broken.

She goes on to say True identity is found only in oneself.  The double sunrise reminds her of two halves coming together at one point to make a whole.   Two flawless halves bound together with a single hinge, meeting at every point.

I am heading to the shore tomorrow and I will look for a double sunrise shell.  That pure love that may exist...that first love...relationships are a world to themselves.

She closes by stating...The sunrise shell has the eternal validity of all beautiful and fleeting things. 
She understands how I feel.