I confess: I’m what you’d call “traditional”. In fact, if I had it all my way, I’d be perfecting my own recipe for marinara sauce, the house would be spick-and-span, and I’d don a a cute skirt every evening when my husband came home at five o’clock. We’re talking straight out of a 1950s Home Ec textbook, people. Did I hear someone gag? Sorry. It sounds dreamy to me … especially the part about the husband coming home at five … and think about all the Anthropologie skirts I’d own!

What is really happening in my kitchen at that time of day more closely resembles an episode of Wipeout than it does Leave it to Beaver. Don’t get me wrong: Wipeout is an awesomely entertaining show — when you aren’t the one getting pummeled by a toddler throwing food, a sink of dirty dishes, an inbox that only grew since the morning, my own desire to go for the run I should have completed before 6:30am, “quick questions” from the two organizations for which I volunteer, a pile of embarrassingly overdue thank-you notes, plus the impending social commitment that I’ll spend more time thinking up excuses to cancel than I’ll actually spend there. How did life get so messy and complicated?!!

The answer: It must be technology. Clearly life wasn’t like this in the 50s.

Wrong.

On vacation earlier this summer, I read a book by Anne Morrow Lindbergh titled “Gift From the Sea”. I was intrigued by the author after reading her husband’s biography, and figured an aptly titled book for a seaside vacay would make for some nice reading. And goodness knows I have been attempting to get through one full book in the year since my son was born — I swear I used to be a bookworm in elementary school. I once was made fun of during START (Stop Talking And Read Time? Pretty sure that wasn’t the acronym … anyway … ) for whipping out Little Women with it’s 1112 pages of sisterly goodness — I digress. I was interested to hear what Anne Lindbergh had to say about being a wife, mother, world-traveler, writer, victim, celebrity, etc. in the 1950s.

I was equally shocked and inspired. In a series of essays in which she describes the different phases of a woman’s life by comparing them to seashells, her gifts from the sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh struck a chord within me that I would have thought 50+ years and a world wide web would have rendered untouchable. I found our similarities shocking when I consider her status, her immense burden of tragedy, her lifestyle, and those decades that divide us. In addressing the feminine instinct to continuously give of ourselves as well as the innate desire to create something beautiful and truly our own, she says, “How can one point to the tangle of household chores, errands, and fragments of human relationships, as a creation? … We are hungry, and not knowing what we are hungry for, we fill up the void with endless distractions, always at hand — unnecessary errands, compulsive duties, social niceties. And for the most part, to little purpose. Suddenly the spring is dry; the well is empty.” She advocates alone time. Creative exertions. Wish there was an iphone app for that.

Later, Lindbergh describes the middle years of marriage as an oyster shell: “It’s form is not primarily beautiful but functional … Sometimes I resent it’s burdens and excresences. But it’s tireless adaptability and tenacity draw my astonished admiration and sometimes even my tears. And it is comfortable in its familiarity, its homeliness.” “The oyster has fought to have that place on the rock to which it has fitted itself perfectly and to which it clings tenaciously. So most couples in the growing years of marriage struggle to achieve a place in the world. It is a physical and material battle first of all, for a home, for children, for a place in their particular society. In the midst of such a life there is not much time to sit facing one another over a breakfast table.” (Apparently they did have breakfast tables in the 1950s)

It felt as if Anne Morrow Lindbergh and I were walking down the beach this summer, sharing our deepest joys and fears, our frustrations, our advice, our triumphs and tragedies. If she had actually been there, I probably would have asked her to join our listserv. Bet she makes a mean marinara.