My best friend in my hometown collected sand from all the beaches he had ever visited and kept them all labeled on a spice rack in his kitchen. I vividly remember staring at all the different shades of colors from black sand beaches in Greece to pink sand in Africa. I’ve known travelers who collect magnets, postcards, suitcase stickers, but I’ve never met anyone like me.
I collect lighthouse keepers.
I never meant to collect anything while traveling, except memories, but my Dad loved lighthouses, and I always thought of him as my very own lighthouse, a beacon of light who never stopped flashing, showing me the way home. By home I don’t mean my physical house, or the house where my parents lived. I mean the home of my soul, my center, my own true north.
It all began when I backpacked through Amsterdam. I entered a shop with chickens running around my feet, and saw a small wooden lighthouse keeper sitting on a shelf wearing a bright yellow raincoat and matching hat. He fit nicely into my hand, and I carefully wrapped him in tissue paper and put in my backpack to take home to my Dad. In Greece I found a mini lighthouse keeper, the size of my thumb, and wrapped him next to the other so they could keep each other company.
In Copenhagen I found one wearing a blue windbreaker, with white hair and a craggy face. This one was a little bigger, and I wrapped him in a yellow paper bag to protect him. I wish I could have protected my Dad from his cancer, but I couldn’t, and over the past few years, as I slowly go through each box in storage, I often come across another lighthouse keeper. He kept them all on shelves around his office. With each one, I held another memory in my hand:
The lighthouse in San Diego, the city where my parents met when my Dad was stationed there and fell into a love affair that resulted in 60 years of dancing in each other’s arms.
The lighthouse in Isla Mujeres where I rode bicycles with my best friend, both of us wearing seashell necklaces and white cotton dresses that floated behind us like wings, as we rode past a house that literally looked like a colossal seashell.
The lighthouse in Maine where I laughed at the way my boots crunched in the snow because I was falling madly in love and the world seemed a silk-spun delight.
The lighthouse in Marblehead that flashed green like the light on Daisy’s dock, a symbol of the opening of my heart.
The lighthouse in Boston where I fell to my knees sobbing after my great loves shattered forever and my father took his last breaths and it felt like the entire world had collapsed.
Symbolically, the lighthouse has always represented protection and illumination, guidance and steadfast endurance. The lighthouse incorporates all of the elements: water crashing against it, the foundation of earth it is built upon, the air it soars into, and the fire lit at its top. It’s circular shape is the shape of eternity, and it’s often considered an “axis mundi,” or connection between heaven and earth. The inner spiral staircase represents the spiral nature of energy flow. Ancient cultures believed energy flowed in spiral shapes, and many of the most ancient symbols on cave walls are the spiral shape. They have always been part of myth and ceremony, and to me, the spiral stairs inside lighthouses can seem like they represent the cyclical nature of life: a descent into grief and loss followed by an ascent back towards the light.
After we lost our lighthouse, our beloved father, my sisters and I were sitting on the rocks in Gloucester as the sea crashed around us, seagulls swooped above us, and the sky started to shift from blue to pink. We leaped around the rocks, laughing, crying, and talking about how we wished we could receive signs from the “other world,” signs from our father. Just as we said this, the Eastern Point lighthouse began to flash. We all looked at each other in awe. Perfect timing, Dad. It felt like a sacred message from him, a powerful message saying no matter how dark, stormy, and treacherous life felt, his enormous love would always light our way back home. We would now all be the keepers of our inner flames. He had showed us how.
I no longer collect lighthouse keepers, but I like seeing them when I’m traveling, in shops by the sea. They’re just little bearded guys, but they are the keepers of the flame. They remind me that no matter how dark and treacherous a storm may seem, no matter how thick the fog of grief around me, when I don’t know which way to turn, I just need to keep my eyes open, watching for the light that will guide me home.
