A love of the Sea Channeled Through A Lovely, Historic Poem-- Sea Fever by John Masefield

Miles first day at the ocean at two weeks old

Waxing Poetic AboutOur Impending "EMPTY NEST"From a Blog I Built on "NESTING"

Tonight is the eve before Miles' moves into his dorm as a Freshman in college, and I am getting philosophical...my baby is growing up, I miss my mother and wish she was here to tell me what it was like when we kids left...Then I notice on my bedside stand the book she gave me many years ago...Sea Fever. I am inspired by the book, a poem written over 100 years ago...words that touched me as a teenage girl in the 1970s, given to me by my own mother.

When I was in high school in 1977 we moved from my sea-side town Port Jefferson in Long Island, New York to Chittenden, Vermont. We relocated from our little cottage (a former sea captain's cottage perched overlooking the Port Jefferson ferry on East Broadway) to rural Vermont. I missed my picturesque town, and my life surrounded by boats and the ocean.

I eventually grew to love and appreciate the Green Mountains, but as one can imagine, I was homesick and pined away for my social and salty life back in New York. For Easter that year, my mother gave me this small book, Sea Fever, and the book is one illustrated poem about the author's deep love for the ocean. Written by famous writer John Masefield hailing from the beginning of the last century (1921), it captured my sentiments at that time.

My mother scribbled a poignant note in the inside cover of this book to me, telling me she knows how much I love the pull of the ocean, and she suspects I'll be back and never far away from what I love. And, she wrote about how much she loved me. I did go back. I have kept that little book by my bedside at our East Hampton beach house for 20 years. It is no mistake I found myself back on Long Island decades later, and chose it as the place to raised my own children.

This week, as we crossed the country to drop my youngest off at college, I am reminded of that pull of the sea. All his life, Miles has loved the ocean-- When he was a newborn, he loved water. As he grew, he was an early swimmer, diving head first into the big crashing surf as a mere toddler--he sailed, he wake boarded, he surfed. He is a writer and a poet himself, and it only seems fitting to pass this book onto him with a note from his grandmother to me, then add my own thoughts about how much I love him, how much I will miss him, and to tell him I suspect and hope he'll be back to the pull of the ocean after an exciting experience in Michigan.

Happy Nesting

XO Tamara