The day we got engaged we were taught how to eat mussels.  A waiter you knew from law school served us.  He informed us that once the meat of the first mussel had been eaten, the empty shell could be used as a tool to pull the second and third mussels from their shells.  Like tweezers.

Another day, a completely other day, we ate seafood in a strange and empty ocean town on the Moroccan coast.  There was calamari and fried fish.  There was a dipping sauce that made you sick.  I remember reading our book aloud and loud outside the bathroom door through that night.  I felt helpless.

Every time locals or travellers in Morocco asked us of our direction and our reasons for choosing the towns we chose, we were sheepish in our response.  “We like the ocean,” we’d say.  “Where we live, there is no sea.”  They would look at us with baffled expressions:  “You flew all the way across the world to be on the ocean?”  their eyes seemed to say.  “Yes,” our eyes said back.