Tag Archives: shelling

Back to Open Waters {Gift from the Sea Intro}

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He’s over the horizon by the time I rub my eyes and wave back to the ocean. My husband and the guys are on a fishing boat heading out beyond sight of land, beyond reach of cell phone towers. I grab the kids’ swimsuits from the drying rack on the balcony and pack our lunch. Out over the water, a plane sputters by dragging an airborne billboard behind it, an invitation for a meal on a nearby island.

Today, I drive us across the Sanibel toll bridge in a caravan with my sisters-in-law and all of our young children, eight little cousins so far, all age 4 and under. We stop at the closest beach, a curved arm of island that rakes in shells like the disciples with their bursting nets. I give the kids their shelling bags, but soon they drop them and go for fistfuls of shells to throw them back into the waves.

I’m in the middle of reading Gift from the Sea, and as we women fly solo on this shelling adventure with the children, I can’t help but think of Anne Morrow Lindbergh who gave up flying co-pilot with her world-famous aviator husband so that she could keep her feet on the ground as a mother raising five children. She, too, had set records in the skies, becoming the first woman in the U.S. to earn a first-class glider pilot’s license. Yet, she was happy to give up the turbulent life of the aviatrix to follow her heart in the work of mothering…and the work of writing.

“I think best with a pencil in my hand,” she said. She had a lot on her mind on this personal vacation on nearby Captiva back in the early 1950s. She had come with images of other women and their “porcelain perfection” and “smiling clock faces” and thought how different motherhood might be for her if she weren’t in the public eye. She had, after all, suffered through a terrible media frenzy in the midst of grief after losing her beloved firstborn son in a traumatic kidnapping and murder in 1932.

Anne looked at other women around her and envied their “smoothly ticking days”. She thought she must be one of the few women looking for her own “contemplative corner,” but over time, she discovered women of all paths and experiences who voiced similar struggles and the desire for more “creative pause” in the midst of their domestic duties.

The rest of the girls put their kids in their cars to head back, but I have the inclination to try and pull off a picnic with my two little ones. I lay a blanket over the sharp shells and pull out our sandwiches. We scarf them down, and then sink our teeth into the fruit and other incidentals. These moments are quiet with our mouths too full to talk.

But when I broach the subject of going back for nap, my toddler girl stomps toward the water and turns up her volume. I grit my teeth and catch her by the tail of her life jacket. We are in evacuation mode now. My son, in a much-appreciated moment of cooperation, flings our trash into the picnic bag. I roll the blanket up fast and grab our towels and hats and shells, then strap the burdens over my sunburned shoulders.

I trudge through sand with my flailing girl as a parcel under my arm. The struggle weighs on me. I steal a panoramic glance of the people around me and feel a bit of public glare. I have an idea why Anne Morrow Lindbergh so longed for solitude.

Yet she knew that hers was more than an individual struggle, and so she penciled down her thoughts, then held her writing to the wind and let it take wing, giving back to the people who had shared their struggles and thereby shaped her like the sea smoothes the edges of broken glass.

Back at the condo, after I’ve convinced the kids to nap, I settle in on the vinyl webbing of the balcony chair and grab my book and pencil. A breeze wafts through the screen and I sigh back.

Soon, my husband returns with news of a banquet of grouper and red snapper coming our way. And he tells me of his first catch of the day, a shark, and how he lugged it up from the water, holding firm against its thrashing. He took a good look at its thick skin and serrated teeth and its fighting spirit. After a few seconds and a mental picture, he held out the line to the fisherman’s knife. And just like that, they let it go, gave the strong creature back to open waters, where it was meant to be.

{This week’s post is based on the Introduction to Gift from the Sea featuring original words from Anne Morrow Lindbergh and a 50th anniversary reflection from the author’s daughter, Reeve Lindbergh.}

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So, what’s your take? Pick one or more of the reflection questions in the comments section and enter a reply to share your thoughts. All subscribers’ comments on the weekly Gift from the Sea posts (shared on Mondays in June and July) will be entered for a drawing at the end of our Summer Book Club 2012.

Gift at Low Tide

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Palms waved on Palm Sunday, fronds rattling, applause in the wind. I walked hand-in-hand with my firstborn toward our abandoned umbrella, its fringe fluttering near the shoreline.

Bare feet shuffled over sandy cobblestone, felt the grit, the heat. I clicked my tongue like the clop-clop of hooves on that old Jerusalem road before crowds laid down coats and branches to dampen the sound. The rightful King could have come in on a high horse but He picked a beast of burden instead, the animal with a cross on its back, a humble donkey…and a baby one at that.

We stepped out onto soft sand. And there, Elliot saw it first– a treasure peeking out. I bent low to see it from his angle. From remnants of a windblown sandcastle, he pulled out a shell, a conch glazed in whitewashed bronze.

He was showing me again– the way to see things first is to get down low where the good stuff is. For the small and the humble it’s right in reach.

I thought of the children in Jerusalem. They saw it first– the promise come true. They shared their hosannas loud, shouted out “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” and made the chief priests reel.

I traced the edge of the shell and followed as it spiraled in a mini Via Dolorosa around to the apex, the top of the hill. It was the best we’d seen all day, barely chipped. And it matched the illustration on the front of the books I’d gathered to give to my sisters-in-law on our week at the shore. I needed three more shells, but I’d take what I could get– I smiled at this one little surprise.

Later, I would read a chapter to match that afternoon’s reflections in the sand, and I would smile again at the thought that Someone knew what was on my mind: “But what humbles like an extravagant gift?” Ann Voskamp asked, “And hadn’t I felt that joy of small, child-wonder when I paused to give thanks?” She went on, “And in that place of humble thanks, God exalts and gives more gifts and more of Himself, which humbles and lays the soul down lower.”

I pressed my knees into the powdery white. “Look, another!” I pointed. Elliot dug wild like the little Andaman Sea beach dogs I’d told him stories about. Shell dust rained to the ground and a whole collection of almost-perfect conches emerged, more than enough to adorn the gifts for the girls.

We stashed the treasures in any pocket we could find and walked toward the shore to do what we came for. We lowered the umbrella and pulled it from the sand. I tucked it under my arm to carry it the distance, my other arm around Elliot.

I thought of what Jesus said in sight of the walk to Skull Hill, how He, the Man of Sorrows, cried back to Jerusalem. He had wanted to gather his people in like children under His arm, but they were unwilling.

They couldn’t know the Messiah any other way. He urged them, “You will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”, same words sung out by those children on His entry into Jerusalem. In His lament, He echoed what He  said to the disciples earlier, that unless we change and become like children we can’t be with him. It’s simple– we can only find Him where He is, with the humble and lowly, stooped down.

I turned to look at the water once more. Quiet waves drew back. The tide went low and left behind bubbling sand. There, little gifts waited for those who would bend low, those ready to become small as children.