Name: Moominpappa at Sea
ISBN: 9780374453060

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.’

‘Have you ever seen a sea-horse?’ asked Moomintroll. ‘Are they as beautiful as those in the picture?’

‘Possibly,’ said Moominmamma. ‘I don’t know. They do say that the painters of pictures exaggerate.’

Moomintroll nodded thoughtfully. What a pity it was that you couldn’t tell from the picture whether the little sea-horse had silver shoes or not.

‘Isn’t life exciting!’ Moomintroll thought. ‘Everything can change all of a sudden, and for no reason at all!

‘Perhaps one shouldn’t try to change things so much on this island,’ said Moominmamma. ‘Just leave it as it is. Back home it was easier somehow… But I’m going to try and make a new garden, higher up.’

‘And there’s so much to do in the lighthouse,’ Moominmama went on. ‘One could make lots of little shelves, and nice furniture! Couldn’t one? And mend that awful staircase… and the roof…’

‘I don’t want to mend anything,’ thought Moominpappa. ‘I don’t want to pick seaweed… I want to build big things, strong things, I want to so terribly much… But I don’t know… It’s so very difficult being a father!’

‘Hallo,’ said Moominpappa. ‘I’m angry.’

‘Good! said Little My with approval. ‘You look as though you’d make a proper enemy of someone. It always helps.’

‘Things are impossible if one doesn’t know whether it’s Sunday or Wednesday. No one can live like that.’

What a pity mothers can’t go of when they want to and sleep out of doors. Mothers, particularly, could do with it sometimes.’ She smiles to herself, and in an absent-minded way she sent Moomintroll a silent, loving greeting in the way trolls do. Moomintroll, lying awake in his glade, felt that she had done this, and, as he usually did, wiggled his ears by way of answer.

this the funniest description ive ever seen for moomin

‘Won’t you rescue me?’ one of them asked. ‘Wont you rescue me, my fat little sea-urchin. Do you gaze at my picture every single day? Do you?’

‘He’s not a sea-urchin,’ said the other one reproachfully. ‘He’s a little egg-shaped mushroom who’s promised to rescue me if it gets stormy. He’s a little egg-shaped mushroom who collects shells for his mummy! It’s charming, isn’t it. Charming!’

… why is this kinda giving me real talk

‘It didn’t turn out quite as I meant it to,’ admitted Moominmamma sadly.

‘Well, it was a very nice idea,’ Moominpappa said consolingly. ‘But I suggest you try to change it into a veranda after all. It’s no good trying to paint something you don’t want to paint.’

The fisherman sat in his house watching the sea swell. It was so marvellous not to have to care about a blessed thing. No one to talk and no one to ask questions, and no one to feel at all sorry for. Only the mystery and unfathomable vastness of the sea and the sky flooding over him and past him that could never disappoint him.

‘Mamma’s vanished,’ he thought. ‘She was so lonely, she just disappeared.’

Little My sat huddled up among the stones. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘the stones are moving.’

‘I don’t care,’ cried Moomintroll. ‘Mamma’s lost!’

‘Mamma’s don’t get lost as easily as all that,’ said Little My. ‘You can always find them in a corner somewhere if you look.’