My 20th anniversary edition paperback of Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1955, 20th anniversary edition published in 1975) photo by Mark C. Taylor. 
Writer, poet, and aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1906-2001. 
Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1931. Anne served as Charles' navigator and co-pilot on many flights.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh was the wife
of American aviator Charles Lindbergh, and an acclaimed author in her own
right. Her most famous book is Gift from the Sea, which became a
surprise bestseller upon its publication in 1955. It’s a slim volume of essays,
using different types of seashells as metaphors for life.
I recently finished reading a
fantastic biography of Charles Lindbergh, The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, by Candace Fleming, and that inspired me to pull out my copy of Gift
from the Sea that I had picked up from a Little Free Library a couple of
years ago. I found it to be a compelling little book. Gift from the Sea can
be connected to the feminist movement, as Morrow Lindbergh writes about the
role of women in American life. She writes of all the different obligations on
women: “What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. It puts the
trapeze artist to shame.” (p.26) Later in the book she writes, “All her
instinct as a woman—the eternal nourisher of children, of men, of society—demands
that she give. Her time, her energy, her creativeness drain out into these
channels if there is any chance, any leak.” (p.45)
Gift from the Sea is also a spiritual book, as Morrow Lindbergh is interested
in how women can nourish their souls. She writes: “Only when one is connected
to one’s own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And,
for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.”
(p.44)
Morrow Lindbergh is writing about
what might now be called “self-actualization.” One of my favorite quotes in the
book is this one: “The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is
being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is
wearing a mask.” (p.32)
In Gift from the Sea, Morrow
Lindbergh describes a hypothetical perfect day. It’s interesting that her
perfect day is spent with her sister, rather than with her husband Charles.
That’s emblematic of the Lindbergh’s marriage, which had its difficulties, to
put it mildly. Charles Lindbergh was always a seeker, a wanderer, and his job
as an aviation consultant took him away from home for long stretches at a time.
That was obviously the way Charles wanted it. He even fathered several children
with 3 German women in the years after Gift from the Sea was published. Anne
did not learn about these families during Charles’ lifetime. Despite it all, it
was Anne who was at Charles’ side as he succumbed to cancer in 1974.
Gift from the Sea is a book that anyone can still gain something useful and
valuable from, as all of us try to find inner peace and calm in a world that
seems much faster-paced than 1955.
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