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TRIBE AND TIDE N AV I G AT I N G I S L A N D FA M I LY L I F E By Em ma Elobeid Pictu res Ch r istia n Wa r ren
We’re now on our sixth island-anchored lap round the sun. Over five hundred and fifty-eight days of summer – roughly the same number of sandcastles – we’ve not once felt the slightest temptation to holiday elsewhere. Is a seven-year itch to be expected? Will the backwash from this strange new stay-put world put a new orbital spin on such summer contentment? Will our Island paradise still feel like paradise now that we’ve all embraced staycationing? Spoiler of the summer: absolutely.
T
he connection between rootedness and freedom is a curious thing. To some, becoming intimately familiar with the same place year-after-year might seem like liberty lost. Not to me. With each passing summer the Island claims a bigger share of my identity; giving a hyggelig sense of belonging and fuelling creativity. The beach is maker and keeper of our family’s summertime stories, both #blessed and gritty alike – memories that stand the test of time with all the sticking power of a mussel’s byssus threads.
In one quarter-mile strip of sand and sea alone, I can pinpoint the exact stump of driftwood where our youngest had his heart broken by the loss of an irreplaceable yellow periwinkle; and the precise coordinates where, two summers ago, my husband and our eldest were chased through the water by a tiny but particularly buoyant jumping shrimp. Memories that are held not just in spaces, but in sayings too: I will never again look at a rocky cluster of grey molluscs without imagining them in a slow race to the sea after the year our tallest sea urchin thought limpets
July and August 2020
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