Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift From the Sea

A few weeks ago, we spent a weekend away in Maryland, and I walked with Tyler's Aunt. We talked about the miles Little O's stroller must log. We talked about my elusive writing 'career'. She asked if I had read Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift From the Sea. I hadn't. And so, she loaned me a small book, so love-worn, it had been broken in two. The pages smelled of must and old furniture and, like many old books, its pages hadn't faded, but instead deepened, to a rich, sandy brown.

Not my usual fare, this inspirational essay. I don't always love books of grand proclamations or extended metaphors. And yet...

It's a book from 1955 about being a mother. Or a woman. Or a person. Or one.  It's a book of quiet but astute observations and questions. Of being whole and of being half. A book written far before the simple movement of today and, perhaps, representing it better. It's about the sea's gift. A shell.  Its polished, or unpolished, or barnacled, outer un-gleam. Its true center, our true center, found alone.

I'm not doing a good job of explaining it. But it exists and hundreds of thousands, according to the course, creased, jacket copy, have found solace in it. 

I did too.

I'll share my favorite piece of it. It starts with a quote I've heard many times. But where it goes is far more interesting than the oft-repeated line. I have always dreamed awake, in the very late night, have always felt compelled to stir in the dark. Maybe now, I better understand why.

... good communication is stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. Before we sleep we go out again into the night. We walk up the beach under the stars. And when we are tired of walking, we lie flat on the sand under a bowl of stars. We feel stretched, expanded to take in their compass. They pour into us until we are filled with stars, up to the brim.

This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the day, of work, of details, of intimacy -- even of communication, one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into one like a fresh tide.

And then at last, from the immensity of interstellar space, we swing down to a particular beach. We walk back to the lights of the cottage glowing from the dark mist of trees. Small, safe, warm and welcoming, we recognize our pin-point human match-light against the mammoth chaos of the dark. Back again to our good child's sleep. 

Celebrating Lenny Lee!

Today a bunch of us in blog land are celebrating the incredible Lenny Lee who turns the big 1-5.

To Lenny, my birthday 'twin', (yes, I am honored to share my own birthday with him) I hope this year is as special as you are.

I send you a bright, happy, orange-pumpkin-spooked-out-cow birthday wish. I'm so lucky to call you a friend.

Puzzle

These days, I sit uncomfortably with the blank page, shifting in my hard-backed seat, taking the laptop to the bed, balancing it on my knees. I sigh. I let my gaze wander, toward the clock, the window and the light of the streetlamp, broken into orange-streaked pieces by the bamboo shades. I delete more than I write. This is possible. To erase the words before letting them find their way. 

There are books in piles on my nightstand, on the floor, stacked in the too-stuffed bookshelves, each bookmarked somewhere in the middle. They are as restless as I am, as unfinished as the stories that sit in my journals and hard-drives, in my heart and head. 

I scold myself, I tell myself, I am losing time. I am losing so much time. I'll waste a whole life. Never tell a single story, never share it, never see it on a shelf or in a store. So obsessed with how I spend my late-night hours, how I waste them, staring into space, writing nothing but sketches I erase, rip up, and I begin to hate myself, sick of and angry for being less-than. Than what? Than who I expect to be.

In the day time, I sit on the floor with Little O and his wooden puzzles. In one, the pieces are set behind little closed doors. There's a cookie jar door and when you flip it open, there's a puzzle piece of cookies. There's an oven and, inside, a turkey piece. I flip them open. He smacks them closed.

At first, he does not understand how to use his finger, how to guide it toward the hole, to open each door. He only knows how to slam it when I open it. Over and over again, smacking it shut, so the little door hinges rattle closed. Look, I say. Look. But no. He does not want the puzzle piece. He does not want to see what is inside. Again and again, he slaps it shut and waits for the next moment he can smack it back in place.

Yesterday, I did not want to sit with the smacking pieces. I set him down. I walked away. 

I found him, moments later, with an open door, a cookie piece in his hand. He marveled at the piece, had this way of lifting his arm and hands like a child with a slow paper airplane woosh, arm up, gaze up, and I marveled at him, at his first instinct to take what he has finally found to the sky.