Kate Constable's Blog

The Sea, The Sea

This weekend I sat with my back to the dunes and watched my little family jumping the waves. My parents and sister were looking down from the holiday unit behind us; we'd all gone away to the beach together to celebrate my sister's birthday. The Lark and the Owl were in heaven, building dams, playing trains, digging in the sand, cooing at baby lambs.

Perhaps it's the sheer vastness of the sea, its impersonal beauty, that gives us a glimpse of eternity. The waves roll in, the waves wash out. But as I sat there, with my birth family sheltered behind me, and my husband and children standing between me and forever, I couldn't help but feel a profound gratitude: that we're all safe, all healthy, all more or less happy, so blessed to have each other and the glory of the sea.

We asked the Owl to rate her holiday out of ten. "Two million, three hundred," was the emphatic reply.

Yeah.