The nearest tide is a full day's drive from her kitchen, and the tree has shells on it anyway. Carols at a volume the neighbors have learned to expect. A wreath that smells faintly of a beach she has not stood on since August.
Mari gets a photo of that tree every year. Every year it has more shells than the last, and she has stopped asking where they come from.
Somebody you know moved inland years ago and never quite unpacked the coast. If you are sending something to wherever she landed this year, The Tide Pool has her December covered. Snow optional. Ocean, apparently, also optional.
When the tail is in the closet, the shirt has to say it for you. The Comfort Colors 1717 is a heavyweight 6.1 oz tee cut from 100% ring-spun cotton grown in the USA, garment-dyed and soft-washed so it already feels like a tide-worn favorite on the first wear (and preshrunk, so the fit holds from June to the cold-water months). It is the tee for the long business day that ends at the lake, and for the landlocked believer whose nearest ocean is a screensaver. Soft on the skin, sovereign in the room. Mermaid Dayz prints it for the woman who has a mersona and a mortgage.