Gift From the Sea (9 page)

The here, the now and the individual have always been the special concern of the saint, the artist, the poet and—from time immemorial—the woman. In the small circle of the home she has never quite forgotten the particular uniqueness of each member of the family; the spontaneity of now; the vividness of here. This is the basic substance of life. These are the individual elements that form the bigger entities like mass, future, world. We may neglect these elements, but we cannot dispense with them. They are the drops that make up the stream. They are the essence of life itself. It may be our special function to emphasize again these neglected realities, not as a retreat from
greater responsibilities but as a first real step toward a deeper understanding and solution of them. When we start at the center of ourselves, we discover something worthwhile extending toward the periphery of the circle. We find again some of the joy in the now, some of the peace in the here, some of the love in me and thee which go to make up the kingdom of heaven on earth.

The waves echo behind me. Patience—Faith—Openness, is what the sea has to teach. Simplicity—Solitude—Intermittency … But there are other beaches to explore. There are more shells to find. This is only a beginning.

L
ooking back at a book published twenty years ago, written in the midst of a busy family life, my chief sensation is astonishment. The original astonishment remains, never quite dimmed over the years, that a book of essays, written to work out my own problems, should have spoken to so many other women. Next comes an embarrassed astonishment at rereading my naïve assumption in the book that the “victories” (“liberation”
is the current word, but I spoke of “victories”) in women’s coming of age had been largely won by the Feminists of my mother’s generation. I realize in hindsight and humility how great and how many were—and are—the victories still to be won. And finally a new development puzzles me: that after so many years, and such great achievement by women, my book should continue to be read.

Why should
Gift from the Sea
, after all we have undergone in these tumultuous twenty years, have any validity for a new generation of women? To look back on those years is a sobering experience. We have lived through the terms of four presidents and the assassination of one. We have wrestled with the tragedy of a long, divisive and conscience-searing war. We have witnessed shattering advances in science and technology. We have watched a man walk on the moon. We have been rocked by political and economic tremors that are still in force and worldwide. All of us have been swept forward by the ground swells of revolutionary social movements, most of them still in progress and not wholly defined by their popular
labels. Among those the most important seem to me to be the Civil Rights movement, the so-called Counterculture, Women’s Liberation and the Environmental Crisis. (It is interesting to note that woman has taken as influential a role in the three movements which do not bear her name as in the movement she calls her own.)

The world has totally changed in twenty years and so, of course, have the lives of every one of us, including my own. When I wrote
Gift from the Sea
, I was still in the stage of life I called “the oyster bed,” symbol of a spreading family and growing children. The oyster bed, as the tide of life ebbed and the children went away to school, college, marriage or careers, was left high and dry. A most uncomfortable stage followed, not sufficiently anticipated and barely hinted at in my book. In bleak honesty it can only be called “the abandoned shell.” Plenty of solitude, and a sudden panic at how to fill it, characterize this period. With me, it was not a question of simply filling up the space or the time. I had many activities and even a well-established vocation to pursue. But when a mother is
left, the lone hub of a wheel, with no other lives revolving about her, she faces a total re-orientation. It takes time to re-find the center of gravity.

All the inner and outer exploration a woman has done earlier in life pays off when she reaches the abandoned shell. One has to come to terms with oneself not only in a new stage of life but in a new role. Life without children, living for oneself—the words at first ring with a hollow sound.

But with effort, patience and a sympathetic and supportive husband, one wins through to the adventure of an “Argonauta.” My husband and I even named our last home, on the island of Maui, “Argonauta.” For me, because of my husband’s death, the Argonauta stage was sadly of very brief duration. I am again faced with woman’s recurring lesson. To quote my own words, “woman must come of age by herself—she must find her true center alone.” The lesson seems to need re-learning about every twenty years in a woman’s life.

What then has a grandmother and a widow to give the new generation of women in the oyster bed?
Admiration, first of all. As I look at my daughters, my daughters-in-law, my nieces and my young friends, I am astounded at what they accomplish. They are better mothers than I was and they are the admitted equals of their husbands in intelligence and initiative. They have no domestic “help” in their homes and yet with vigilant planning, some skillful acrobatics and far more help from their husbands than any previous generation, they manage to lead enriching lives, including special interests of their own. They go out to work or they study; they write or they teach; they weave or paint or play in musical groups; they are often involved in civic activities. Sometimes they do several of those things at once.

Are they happy—or shall I say, happier than my generation? This is a question I cannot answer. In a sense, I think it irrelevant. Without hesitation I can affirm that they are more honest, more courageous in facing themselves and their lives, more confident of what they want to do and more efficient in carrying through their aims. But, above all, they are more aware.

Perhaps the greatest progress, humanly speaking, in these past twenty years, for both women and men, is in the growth of consciousness. In fact, those movements I mentioned under their popular labels could be more truly described as enlargements in consciousness. A new consciousness of the dignity and rights of an individual, regardless of race, creed, class or sex. A new consciousness and questioning of the materialistic values of the Western world. A new consciousness of our place in the universe, and a new awareness of the interrelatedness of all life on our planet.

For women, much of this new awareness is due to the Women’s Liberation movement. Enlightenment has filtered down to a vast audience through the public media. Talks, programs, courses and articles have been addressed to women and concerned with their lives. New ground has been opened up, revealing the undiscovered depths of woman’s emotional life, through the pioneering literature of brilliant writers such as Florida Scott Maxwell, Anaïs Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, Doris Lessing and, in our own
country, writers as diverse as Elizabeth Janeway and May Sarton. The best “growing ground” for women, however, may be in the widespread mushrooming of women’s discussion groups of all types and sizes. Women are talking to each other, not simply in private in the kitchen, in the nursery or over the back fence, as they have done through the ages, but in public groups. They are airing their problems, discovering themselves and comparing their experiences. More important, they are beginning to talk to men, openly and honestly, often arguing and challenging, but at last trying to explain what they felt could never be explained. They retreat less often behind that age-old screen of women: “If you don’t understand, I can’t possibly tell you.” (How arrogant to assume your partner cannot understand!) And men, to their great credit, for the most part are listening and, I believe, understanding more than we ever expected.

Much of this exploration and new awareness is uncomfortable and painful for both men and women. Growth in awareness has always been painful. (One
need only remember one’s own adolescence or watch one’s adolescent children.) But it does lead to greater independence and, eventually, cooperation in action. For the enormous problems that face the world today, in both the private and the public sphere, cannot be solved by women—or by men—alone. They can only be surmounted by men and women side by side.

1975