Every spring there comes a day when suddenly the kittiwakes are back.

Squawking and chattering non-stop like second year students returning after summer break, greeting old friends, catching up on the gossip, bickering for the best nesting spots: far from the subtlety of the first snowdrop or the gentleness of the early bumblebee, boy do you know when the kittiwakes are back.

They make themselves comfortable on the red sandstone cliffs of the Eye Cave Beach as if they’ve never been away. Slotted in like a jigsaw-puzzle, no ledge left unoccupied. From a distance the colony looks almost static, but as you walk the coast path towards it, you sense it is in constant motion: hundreds of birds coming and going, taking-off and landing, one-in, one-out.

I guess they’ve earned their excitement after a long season at sea, their winter spent riding the Atlantic waves off Greenland or Canada: somewhere far colder, wetter and stormier than our bright, breezy East Coast.

I envy them, pairing up and settling down in their sheltered spot after so long adrift. All doing the same thing, all understanding one another. So sure of themselves, sure of their position, sure of their purpose.

Until a year ago, I had a purpose. His name was Benjamin, and he was seven years old. My purpose was to feed him, bathe him, teach him, medicate him, keep his lungs working, keep his heart beating. My purpose was to hold him, to stroke his hair, to whisper to him, to kiss his cheeks. My purpose was to advocate for him, to know everything about him, to fight for him, to change the world for him, to listen to him, to learn from him, to love him, to share him. My purpose was to birth him and then to bury him.

Without him, like a winter kittiwake, I am adrift.

I have two other children; strong, independent girls both. They give me purpose too, but they don’t need me like he did. They will do everything they want and more, but they don’t cause me to dream like he did. They make me immensely proud, but they don’t show me another world like he did. I love them and am there for them, always, but I am adrift. And they are a little adrift too, without Benjamin, for he was a rock to all of us.

All summer the kittiwakes will breed and squawk and feed and shit and fledge their chicks on the rocks. Then one day the cliff will no longer be grey-white but red again. The breeze no longer fishy but merely salty. The only sound the crash of waves upon shingle.

They will be adrift once again, and I will envy them no more until spring.

Alexandra Davey