A Small Gift

A 1955 copy of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift From the Sea has sat on my bookshelf as long as I can recall, so long that I have no idea which introspective woman in my life—there have been several—put it there. Each time I dust and see its spine I think what a gift the book was to me twenty-odd years ago, at a time I needed it, and that I should dip into it again. I was finally enticed to reread it after hearing a recent NPR "All Things Considered" segment. Youngest child Reeve Lindbergh was interviewed on the 50th anniversary publication of her mother's book. Both the interviewer and I are struck by the timeliness of her messages for women.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of aviator Charles Lindbergh, was intelligent, well-educated, and a gifted writer who saw herself as a creative member of the artist community. She mothered six children, endured the infamous kidnapping and murder of her first-born, and struggled to find her identity in marriage to an American hero—a man of dubious moral character, it turns out.

Gift From the Sea was the product of a solitary and rustic vacation on Captiva Island, Florida, where Anne Morrow Lindbergh had gone to sort out her life. Reeve said her mother's sister, with whom Anne was very close, visited Anne at Captiva. She believed Anne had gone there "to write herself out of a marriage, and instead, had written herself back into it." Anne was nearing fifty, nearing the end of child-rearing obligations, and questioning whether she was nearing the end of a marriage, though none of this is spelled out in the book. She thoughtfully reflected on the life of women (to say "creative women" is redundant), using seashells found—never hunted—on the beach, so-called gifts from the sea, as metaphors of life.

As I do, Anne used writing as a means of making sense of her life and defining her purpose. Her musings are universal and piercingly perceptive. One senses she was wounded and striving to survive on her own terms, or at least terms she could integrate into the life she had.

Listening to the radio interview, I had a moment of recognition when Reeve said her mother taught her children that the antidote for loneliness is solitude. I require solitude and enjoy my own company, but in my first marriage I was often lonely. Independence was important to us both, as it is to me still. But there was a rejection aspect to my loneliness in my first marriage. I recall with crystal clarity a defining moment during that last year. I had been sitting alone in our den, reading, no television on, children in bed. I went upstairs for something and found my husband stretched across our bed, also reading, no television on. I smiled at the irony of parallel activity and said, "I'm lonely! Why don't you come downstairs and read with me?" No intrusion on his solitude, no expectation, just a simple desire for his company while we pursued our individual reading. He acknowledged me and I returned to the den. He never joined me.

The memory is harsh twenty-seven years later—it was such a small thing to ask. That there was so little communion between us we couldn't even pursue independent reading in each other's company, seemed too sad. I don't demand much from loved ones except good humor and respect, and that they care whether or not I come home at night. In that moment I realized he could take me or leave me, and it seemed too profound a rejection. I wanted to matter more.

When all the bits of anger finally coalesced into action, I knew that being alone on my own terms, not because someone rejected me, was a healthy and dignified choice. So the antidote for the loneliness of my marriage was the solitude of a single life. Alone-ness is preferable to loneliness.

I am a few years older now than Anne Morrow Lindbergh was in 1955. Her Nazi-sympathizing American-hero husband has recently been revealed as a secret world-class philanderer. It seems he fathered at least seven illegitimate children with three different European women, making the veiled anguish she must have been suffering all the more poignant. Whether she knew the extent of his betrayal, no one knows or says; she never spoke of it. I am sure she was not deceived.

Without whining or humbling herself, she conveyed with grace her personal truths, wrested in the quiet motions of beachcombing, the solitude she sought as antidote to loneliness. A spare and simple writer who yearned for an orderly life, she must often have been overwhelmed by the complexities of it. The seashell analogies are thoughtful and lovely, simple and clean as her writing. But this small book requires a long and gentle read, made so by the inevitable introspection it will provoke. I hope Anne Morrow Lindbergh achieved the peace she sought. Her thoughtful words have surely been a gift to others for fifty years.