Adjusting

We’ve decided not to treat Silas any differently, despite his diagnosis of developmental delay. We’re still stacking blocks, reading stories, and playing his favorite opera arias on the laptop. Why, just yesterday, we spilled a little gasoline on him, and everyone had a good laugh. And in honor of the doctor’s psychic diagnosis, in which he looked into the future and announced our son would have an IQ of 50, we’ve given Silas a new nickname. We now call him “Fitty.” Unless he does something particularly clever, in which case we call him “Fitty-two.”

But despite our iron-willed determination to be of good cheer, life on a boat with a baby is still an adjustment. Sometimes, Silas howls in frustration, the screams resounding through our tiny living space, and I wish I could tear off my clothes, swim to shore, and go roam with the sheep in the meadows. Their lives seem so simple: Eat grass. Poo. Occasionally get a haircut, and look like an asshole for awhile so someone else can wear a sweater.

It’s at trying times such as these that the New Zealand anti-smacking law can seem so restrictive. You’re not allowed to smack your child in New Zealand, even when he’s behaving badly and you haven’t even had your first cup of coffee. On the other hand, they don’t say anything about gaffing him like a tuna. That’s a relief, because Silas hooked himself on a shock cord yesterday, screaming and thrashing until Peter released him like a large, pink game fish.

Naturally, I asked what happened. “Why was the baby chewing on a hook attached to an industrial-strength piece of elastic?” I wanted to know, blotting the gore from his cheeks. Silas’ screams had subsided by this time, and he was reduced to a series of pitiful sobs.

“It felt good on his gums,” Peter replied, as though this made sense. “I never would have thought he’d hook his cheek with it. I didn’t know it could be so dangerous.”

But it turns out that a hook is not a suitable toy for a baby. And neither is a bucket of gasoline. We know this because after his encounter with the shock cord, Silas crawled over to the open container of dirty gas that Peter had drained out of our outboard engine, and spilled the contents over his hands and legs.

I heard a commotion in the cockpit, and looked up from the bread I was kneading in the galley.

“One minute!” Peter protested, handing me a flammable baby. “I turned my back for ONE MINUTE, and he found the gasoline!”

I grabbed the baby’s hands in a wet washcloth, scrubbing the poison from his fingers before he stuffed them in his mouth. “You can’t have an open container of gas in the cockpit,” I explained, through gritted teeth. “It’s not safe.”

“That’s boat life!” Peter argued. “Everything can’t always be safe all the time!”

I tactfully suggested that while everything couldn’t always be safe, it might perhaps be more safe without easily accessible explosives on board. But Peter wasn’t ready to agree. Instead, he stormed up on deck, where he spent the afternoon scrubbing the cockpit eight hundred times so it wouldn’t reek of poisonous solvents.

It occurs to me, in retrospect, that Peter might have been frightened and upset that he nearly blew up our retarded baby. I suppose this is understandable. After all, we’re still getting used to life on the boat.

What is not understandable, on the other hand, is the fact that I now have to piss in a bucket. AGAIN.

The moment of reckoning came last night, at the end of a difficult and trying day of boat life. After gaffing our child and dousing him with gasoline, Peter felt drained, and decided to take a shower. (The word “shower,” it should be noted, is here used euphemistically. What we actually do is pour a kettle of hot water over our heads and hope most of the lice fall off.)

Silas had long ago gone to sleep, which was a wise move, under the circumstances. I was enjoying a cup of tea in the quarterberth, relishing a few quiet moments at the end of a hard day. I heard a pumping noise from the head, and thought nothing of it.

And then, the pumping stopped. I heard a low, mirthless laughter. And all of a sudden, I knew.

“The head broke, didn’t it?” I asked.

Peter couldn’t even talk. He was laughing too hard. It was the dry, hollow laughter of a political dissident on his way to the gulag. It was the laughter of a man who knows he is condemned.

“I don’t fucking believe it,” he chuckled. “The head broke. With a big, steaming shit in it.”

So, instead of taking a warm and restful shower, Peter snapped on a pair of latex gloves. He busied himself with pulling fresh turds out of the broken toilet, collecting them in a bucket to throw over the side.

“I have to pee,” I announced. “When can you fix it?”

Wordlessly, Peter handed me the bucket. And then he went to bed.

On my good days, I think of this as a character-building exercise. Unlike those coddled kids on land, with their decadent refrigerators and indoor plumbing, our Silas will grow up with true inner steel. When he’s old and grey, he can tell his grandkids how easy they have it. “When I was a youngster,” he’ll cackle, “my parents gave away my toys. All I had was a shock cord and a jug of gas to play with. Toilet? HA! We barely had a pot to piss in. Had to carry the turds on deck, and hope we didn’t splash the laptop on the way up.”

And then his grandkids will roll their eyes. “Oh, Fitty,” they’ll say. “You’re so crazy!”

Things do get better. Silas’ cheek is healing up real nice, and he hardly smells like gasoline at all now. And Peter doesn’t smoke any more, which significantly lowers the risk of exploding babies. We’re anchored in Parua Bay, which is one of the most beautiful and exclusive areas of Whangarei. Our boat is surrounded by jagged Polynesian cliffs, with luxurious homes overlooking the water.

And wealthy people are so understanding. I’m sure they won’t mind the boat bums, tossing buckets of hobgoblins into their bay. As long as we don’t smack the child, everyone should get along just fine.