IT WAS in Walker Bay that I spent many happy holidays as a child. And it was here that my husband and I, and our three children, stopped after a week on the road.

We stayed with my mother. My sister and her family stayed there too. Nothing has the ability quite like your family to unlock your inner child — that moody, cross, delighted, stroppy being. Many years of parenting and schooling keep that impossible child at bay for much of your independent adult life.

Christmas came and went. Already it’s a hazy memory of dozens of small children and countless glasses of champagne. We reconnected and old family dynamics came into play. Some good and some bad.

With Christmas over we could explore some beaches. Everyday there was a call for “a new beach please”. And luckily we could take them to a new one on the days when it wasn’t raining or the Cape winds weren’t blowing too strongly.

On New Year’s Day, when the beaches are traditionally packed with day trippers and the car parks become picnic spots, we went to a tidal pool in Hermanus, where few people spend time, even in high season. The Marine Pool has not changed at all, or only a little bit. It’s here that I felt most like the child I once was, and sometimes still am. There I was, fishnet in hand, helping my babies look for sea creatures in the rock pools.

I showed them how to dip a finger into a sea anemone and then watch it gracefully close. But the sight of so many tiny dead crabs looked awful and reminded me that our planet is indeed in peril. And, as a parent, I felt the urgency to protect the Earth that, as the scientist James Hansen says, will be inherited by our children, grandchildren, and those yet to be born.

(The latest edition of The Economist has a 16-page special report on the sea.)

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.