Gift From The Sea

In this chapter, Lindbergh describes an oyster shell she found. Oyster shells are common on the beach, but each one is unique in its irregular growth and its patterns because it is formed by a distinct struggle to survive and adapt to its environment. As she notes, the shell "looks rather like the house of a big family” (89). It reminds Lindbergh of her own life, and the lives of other women, in the middle years of marriage. Like the shell, her life at that time was messy, spreading out in multiple directions and “heavily encrusted with accumulations” (90). Children’s bicycles, toys, extra cars, and equipment seemed to spill out on all sides of her home at that time.

In this way, the oyster shell is a good metaphor for the middle point in marriage. Well beyond the first blush of romantic attachment, as Lindbergh says, “it suggests the struggle of life itself” (90). A young married couple, like the oyster that clings to its place on the rock, must fight to establish itself within a given society. This is a physical and material struggle to establish jobs, security, and a house.