I was a half-dozen oysters in when I took my first pause. It was oyster number six and that signified me at age 6. I was in kindergarten then. I pictured the classroom, the classmates, the slightly seasick school bus rides over windy roads.
The reverie lasted just a moment. There were more oysters to eat, a lot more.
For the past few years, I have decided to mark my birthday by eating a raw oyster for each year of my life.
Raw oysters work because they are ephemeral and evocative and that fits both a celebration and a reflective mood. Memories and stories fix themselves to the oysters year by year.
By the second dozen, I was 16 years old, new driver’s license in hand. Just two oysters later, I left home for college. The chapters of life were speeding by, and the oysters kept coming.
My oyster love was a late bloomer. When I was growing up in New England, they seemed exotic, even highfalutin, certainly not in my orbit.
But then I moved to New Orleans - at oyster 25 in this count - and oysters were everywhere. I studied them and their place in the life of a city I was trying to understand, in the way you try to understand a lover when you realize the crush is real and want to see where it can go.
I found the New Orleans oyster bar so alluring, a counter to sidle up to and slurp down a few with a beer, an effortless indulgence.
Around my birthday oyster bar this year, the stories gushed. Oyster 31, the year Katrina hit, a big decision: Leave this broken place, or double down and really make a life here. I stayed, and the oysters kept telling their tales as the dozens add up.
Along with them came the gift of memories formed through growth and grief, loss and gratitude and perspective.
Some presents you don’t unwrap. Some you shuck open and gulp down.
