Chocolate Seashell

Munching on this chocolate seashell, I can't help but think of last summer. It was the summer when I discovered two things: my love of the sea and my love of chocolate. I was just 15 then, and somewhat naive. I had never had a gourmet chocolate seashell before. I had never been kissed. I was a midwestern boy who had never seen the ocean.

But that summer, my parents took the whole family to Maine for a summer vacation to die for. Can you imagine, growing up in Wisconsin, what it is like to see the sea for the first time? That endless stretch of water with its lovely salty spray blowing on your face. It was as sweet as a chocolate seashell, which incidentally, I got to try the first day I went to the sea.

It was this little confectioneer in the tourist town of Bar Harbor. The woman behind the register was just the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I could tell by her name tag her name was Sara, and I could tell by looking at her that she was about my age. When she handed me the chocolate seashell, I started a conversation with her. It turns out that she was 17. Just two years difference between us, and yet somehow, it meant that she was almost a woman while I was still a boy.

Nonetheless, she said she'd show me around that evening, and gave me the most promising, adult smile I'd ever received from a woman until that day. My parents had waited outside the shop – they weren't the type of parents who delight in humiliating their kids, which is all too rare in my opinion. She met me that evening after I had had dinner, down by the harbor, and we walked around and looked at the boats.

It turns out that she was just beginning her senior year in highschool, but already filled with dreams of the future. She wanted to be a marine biologist when she grew up. Her dad had been a fisherman before the fishing trade dried up and the family started the confection business. She loved the sea and wanted to do all she could to protect it. I felt naïve. I was only a Sophomore, and had no idea what I was going to do with my life. But when she kissed me under the moon that night, it filled me with the feeling of the future and the taste of a chocolate seashell.