I always thought that was an odd phrase. I have asked my folks about it from time to time, they being gifted wordsmiths: does anybody have cold heart cockles? What’s a cockle, and does it truly have heart? Where on earth did that phrase come from? They didn’t know, and neither did our dictionary.
Shelle just came home from a college internship in marine biology–a few hours after her Sea Silk shawl arrived home via UPS. Cool. She spent several hours showing us pictures of things she’d studied, some weird, some wonderful. One of those crabs looked exactly, in the photo she took, like the tick I removed from her back after she came home from a week at camp one summer, with a bulls-eye of red rings around that bug. (They tested the bug and her both, no Lyme. Phew.)
Anyway. She brought me a few shells, and I had to show this: these are Heart Cockles. So named because when you see the intact shell from the side, it looks heart-shaped. But what I now love best about them, something I had thought to be just an ordinary white shell you see on probably every beach–kind of like sea gulls, something you take for granted, right?–was this: they are a favorite food of giant sea stars, which can move amazingly fast towards them. The heart cockles have one foot, which they stick out so they can run away from the sea star. How does such a thing run? It flips itself, over and over, a seashell version of a living Slinky, running away at a good clip. Does Pixar know about this?
I mentioned in my book that I’d made my first Monterey shawl for my friend Michelle, who is a dedicated marine biology enthusiast. I had no idea, when I wrote that, that my daughter Michelle was likewise going to become one. But I sure can see now why she is.
So good to have you home, sweetie.