Gift From The Sea

Understanding, let alone practicing, the argonauta type of “fully personal relationship” (110) that can follow middle age and allows for mutual self-realization is difficult. This new relationship stage is rare and unfamiliar. In this stage, as Lindbergh says, “One has left the usual shell collections” (104). The double-sunrise shell and the oyster bed are both well-known. People are familiar, either directly or through others' experiences, with the first ecstatic moment of a relationship and the more practical domestic form it can evolve into. In contrast, the argonauta relationship transcends ordinary knowledge and experience. People are unlikely to have experienced it themselves or to know another couple who has done so.

Worse, Lindbergh suggests that it may not even be fully possible at the present time. As she says, “It perhaps can only follow a long development in the history of human civilization” (106) after “woman—individually and as a sex—has herself come of age” (107). In this context, coming of age means achieving economic independence. It can also encompass emotional independence and the freedom to pursue individuality and selfhood free from traditional gender norms and the constraints they imply. Whether contemporary US culture has reached this stage remains an open question. Nevertheless, Lindbergh says that a perfect day in her life holds a “glimpse” and "clues” (111) to the ideal of the argonauta relationship. This is a day she spends with her sister where they walk and talk and eat “easily and instinctively together” (112) while also finding time to work and think by themselves.

At first glance, this appears to simply be a pleasant holiday day spent with a sibling in nature. However, more is going on beneath the surface. As Lindbergh observes, “We have moved through our day like dancers, not needing to touch more than lightly because we were instinctively moving to the same rhythm” (116). Behind the apparent simplicity of the relationship on that day is a subtle and intuitive but complex “dance.” Each partner, in the time together, is attuned to the needs of the other; like dance partners, they know when to draw near and when to pull apart.

Thus, a new type of relationship is suggested, one that is based on a deeper understanding of the other and the need to allow and support the partner's free self-expression. It does not seek to possess and control the other; rather, as Lindbergh says, it “kisses the joy as it flies” (117), appreciating the other’s being without imposing demands upon it. Her means of narrating her personal account of her day with her sister conjures this possibility: The narrative voice is intimate but also calming and tranquil. This tone is captured in her remark that “we walk up the beach in silence, but in harmony, as the sandpipers ahead of us move like a corps of ballet dancers keeping time to some inaudible rhythm” (113). Here, Lindbergh's poetic writing style brings together both closeness and independence. This allows her to evoke, in a direct and immediate way that literal descriptions of her day cannot attain, the meaning of the argonauta.