Across the harbour from Dublin, there is a beach with my name. The Shelley Banks, or Shellybanks.
I hadn’t realized I was a landform — or that I was perhaps named for one, so I’ll accept it as a coincidence of history and geography that we found this in Ireland, my great-grandparents’ homeland.
“I am a rock,” sings Paul Simon.
I am a beach.
We visited on a rainy October day, when the tide was high and Kittwakes and red-billed Oyster Catchers clustered on thin strips of sand, feathers fluffed and bodies turned against the wind.