On a college visit to Washington, D.C. with my mom, I accidentally ordered soft-shell crab. I was seduced by the menu’s descriptors “golden” “pan-fried” and “butter” and ill-prepared (horrified) for what arrived: A guy or gal who’d recently molted, and was in the process of growing a new shell — someone just trying to make it — and now, dinner.
I haven’t had a SSC since, but I think about them a lot. All crabs molt, but only a few species are edible in their liminal form. Soft-shell crabs are delicious and desirable precisely because they’re neither this nor that. They’re valued for their changeability and the most valuable at the in-between.
Change can be hard, I think we all agree. And personal evolution even more so. When you’re no longer this, but you’re not yet that, and you’re kind of flailing, eking, jolting toward…something… without knowing how loooooong you’ll stay in that ‘neither.’
But imagine, this is when you’re most delectable!
There’s momentum around this idea of a “soft life”: life without self-damaging hustle, where you know your own worth and prioritize your wellbeing. Soft life is especially powerful when plugged into a racial and social justice framework, a la the Nap Ministry’s ‘rest as resistance.’ Because while white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (bell hooks) exhausts all of us, it very intentionally exhausts some more than others. So the rest hits differently.
But while I’m thinking about soft life, I’m striving now for “soft-shell crab life.” Trying not to rush from what was to what will be; choosing to linger there in-between. Trying not to feel sheepish of my soft, translucent shell, but proud. Trying to stretch the “i-n-g” of molting out as long as it needs. No rush, no hurry; savoring the gerund.
This week I was standing in Dabob Bay, a small, pristine bay at the top of the Hood Canal (which is really a fjord of the Puget Sound) on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. It’s 633 feet at its deepest; I stood just at the edge. I perceived the sliiiiightest scritching at my foot. I didn’t move, just waited. One, then two, three, and then four minuscule crabs arthritically clawing, gingerly pinching, just generally snooping around.
It felt like they were nibbling at me. I was pretty sure they weren’t soft-shell. Then I realized, I’m the soft-shell and perhaps I must be delicious to them. I let them nibble for a while then had to go. If you’re in a soft-shell place, know you’re delicious too.
There’s a somewhat loopy, free-wheeling book by Gary Zukav that I’m reading only because of Oprah. He talks about how our intentions drive our experiences (so if you’re surprised at an experience, you’re not honest about your intention), and our intentions are rooted in either love or fear. That’s it.
It’s soft-shell crab season and let’s consider our intentions: love or fear? Letting go of the fear that we’ll be caught, and allowing a love to bloom for our sweet, flimsy shells that hold us together in the journey of the in-between. Let’s just scritch and snoop around a bit. Have a beautiful soft-shell crab summer <3.
Not a soft-shell crab, but another molter - a hermit crab! - in artist Aki Inomata’s 3-D-printed shells. Cool.