Tove Jansson

When the Moomin family members need a change of scenery, they decide to take up residence in a lighthouse. As they discover their new home, the family also discover surprising, and wonderfully funny, new things about themselves.

Moominpappa at Sea

Nica

ONE afternoon at the end of August, Moominpappa was walking about in his garden feeling at a loss. He had no idea what to do with himself, because it seemed everything there was to be done had already been done or was being doe by somebody else.

‘If youre sore, you’re sore,’ observed Little My, peeling her potatoes with her teeth. ‘You have to be angry sometimes. Every little creep has a right to be angry. But Pappa’s angry in the wrong way. He’s not letting it out, just shutting it up inside him.’

‘My dear child,’ said Moominmamma, ‘Pappa knows what he’s doing.’

‘I don’t think he does,’ said Little My simply. ‘He doesn’t know at all. Do you know?’

‘Not really,’ Moominmamma had to admit.

‘We could have left immediately after lunch. But on an occassion like this we must wait for sunset. Setting out in the right way is just as important as the opening lines in a book: they determine everything.’

‘It’s strange,’ Moominmamma thought. ‘Strange that people can be sad, and even angry because life is too easy. But that’s the way it is, I suppose. The only thing to do is to start life afresh.’

‘I’m going to sleep for a while. Problems often solve themselves while one sleeps. The brain works better if one leaves it in peace.’

‘If two men like that live on the same island, either they know all there is to know about each other at all. Probably both. One as a result of the other, I mean.’

Moominpappa sighed. He went round the lighthouse to the rocks overlooking the sea, where the others couldn’t see him. The family got on his nerves at times - they could never stick to the matter in hand. He wondered whether all fathers found the same thing. 

‘The world is full of great and wonderful things for those who are ready for them.’

‘Mamma, just try and imagine a perfectly marvellous spot that you’ve found and made your very own, only to discover that there are crowds of other people there who don’t want to move away. Have they the right to stay put, although they don’t understand how beautiful the place is?’

‘Yes, of course they have,’ said Moominmamma, sitting down in the seaweed.

‘But what if they would be just as happy in a rubbish-heap?’ exclaimed her son.

‘Well, then one would have to reason with them,’ said Moominmamma. ‘And perhaps give them a hand with the moving. It’s very trying to have to move if one has lived in the same place for a long time.’

He looked quickly at the calendar, straight into the sea-horse’s eyes. ‘We’re alike, you and I,’ he thought. ‘We understand each other, we only care about beautiful things. I shall get my glade, and nothing else matters. But just at the moment I don’t want to think about it.’

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