Cliff-Diving

My father used to hang glide when I was a kid. He told me the best hang glider was the guy who got up at five o’clock in the morning, packed up his gear on the roof of his car, made himself a bag lunch, and then poked his nose outside. If the wind didn’t feel right, he didn’t go. He made other plans for the day, no matter how much he’d been looking forward to jumping off a cliff.

Then my Dad broke his arm and stopped hang gliding. He took up safer hobbies, like windsurfing and eating smelly French cheeses. This may have something to do with being a responsible parent. I can’t be sure, because I never really listened to that part of the lesson. Sailing our baby down the Wairarapa Coast is not the safest way we could be spending our time. We could be home right now, on land, watching Finding Nemo for the eight thousandth time while Silas learns how to take off his diaper and fingerpaints the walls.

The part of my Dad’s lecture I did listen to, though, was the bit about turning around if the wind didn’t feel right. We’ve been watching the weather for days now, planning our next hop to the South Island. This is easily the most challenging leg of our journey so far. It’s about 360 nautical miles to Akaroa, our destination. Most of the trip is in the Roaring Forties. In order to get there, we have to sail through some of the stormiest waters on New Zealand’s East Coast, then cross the Cook Strait, where winds can funnel through the narrow pass and kick up massive seas. The trip will take us three to four days, and there’s no safe refuge between Napier and Akaroa. Once we leave, we’re committed. We either keep going , or we turn around. There’s no third option. We could head out to sea, but the next stop would be Chile.

We knew this leg would be hairy, and we’re ready for it. We met up with a carpenter here in Napier, and had him make us a set of washboards instead of the cute little doors that usually cover Sereia’s companionway. He also made a set of 1-1/2” kauri battens for our doghouse windows, bolted right through the cabin. Our windows are now at least twice as strong as they were before, much less likely to shatter in case of a knockdown.


Peter’s been stalking the web for weather like most men search for online porn. He has to keep at it, because the really tricky part about the weather down here is that it changes all the time. On Friday, we thought Sunday would be a good day to leave. On Saturday, our window moved to Tuesday. Yesterday, we saw a front building, but we figured if we left this morning, we might squeak past Cook Strait before the really nasty weather hit. Then today, the forecast changed again:

Outlook following 3 days: Northeast rising to Tuesday afternoon 20 knots. Becoming Tuesday evening northwest 20 knots, rising Wednesday afternoon 35 knots and Thursday 50 knots with high sea.

It’s those last 6 words that got me. Fifty knots? Fifty knots?? The Wairarapa Coast is a notorious place. Land people say, “Don’t go,” but they say that about everything interesting. We ignore them. We listen to the fishermen and the delivery captains, the guys who’ve been there. “Wouldn’t want to be down the Wairarapa in a blow,” they tell us, looking grim. “You’ll want a northerly wind, not a northwesterly if you can help it. And stay away from those southerly blows. They’ll stop you dead.”

Yesterday evening, we tried to keep things light. “Fifty knots, ha ha,” we tittered. “At least it’s going in the right direction. Who knows? We might miss it completely!”

Then I woke up in the night, electrified with fear. I stared at the water reflections wavering on the cabin wall. It’s not Sereia I’m worried about. She can take fifty knots. We wouldn’t sink. At least, I don’t think we’d sink. But what about Silas? What if he gets sick, not just for a few hours, but for days? What if I get so incapacitated that I can’t move or function? What if we make it through two days of hell, only to get turned around?

This morning I went to take a shower, hoping to collect myself. Peter rang up John, the guy who made our washboards. He’s delivered boats all over New Zealand. He lives in Napier, and these are his home waters. As expected, he didn’t tell us not to go. Instead, he said, “If you go today, and it blows fifty when you hit the Strait, you will be very, very uncomfortable.”

John’s version of “uncomfortable” is most people’s version of “car crash.” He confirmed what Peter was already thinking.

I came out of the shower, still shaky. I’d surprised myself by bursting into tears while I was putting on my shoe. I stood there, in the shower stall, wearing one shoe, my breath coming hot and fast. I wasn’t sad—not at all. I was scared.

“It’s not a good idea,” Peter said, as we sat on the ground to talk. “If we go today, we’re going to get our asses handed to us. If it was just you and me, and you weren’t pregnant, we’d take a shot of rum and we’d just go for it. It would be fun—”

“But what if we don’t get our weather? What if we get stuck and we run out of time?”

The question hung in the air, unanswered. Because that’s always the question. People do get stopped in New Zealand, all the time. They get tired of waiting and then they make plane reservations. Or else they sail into a storm, and battle it out. Mostly, they make it. Sometimes they don’t.

“It’s still early in the season,” Peter soothed, rubbing my back. “We might go tomorrow. You never know.”

But today, at least, the wind wasn’t right to jump off a cliff.

Window

I’ve never had to dart across the street under fire, but I’ve seen people do it on TV. The trick is to crouch behind something thick and bullet-proof—a shot-up car, for example, or a buxom young blonde. You squat there, looking intense, then poke your head out like an anxious groundhog. When the coast is clear, you make a break for it, charging across the street before the bastards get a chance to reload. That’s the basic set-up, though you can accessorize with a sawed-off shotgun or a steel briefcase full of money if you prefer. QKNW6BDWDSBP

Apart from the briefcase full of money, that scenario is a lot like sailing around New Zealand. Before rounding East Cape, we crouched in Mt. Maunganui, feeling nervous and forlorn. Every morning, Peter checked the weather. “GALE WARNING IN EFFECT,” the friendly lady informed us. “WINDS SOUTHWEST 20 KNOTS, RISING TO 40 KNOTS IN THE AFTERNOON. MODERATELY ROUGH SEAS BECOMING VERY ROUGH IN THE AFTERNOON. IF YOU SAIL TODAY, YOU’LL DROWN, WHICH IS AN EXTREMELY PAINFUL WAY TO DIE. THANK YOU FOR USING NEW ZEALAND MET SERVICES.”

“Maybe we should wait a day,” Peter would suggest. “That Turkish place makes an awfully good falafel.”

Then we’d go into town and stuff ourselves with chickpeas and chili sauce, and try to forget the Apocalypse that was being unleashed to the east of us.

And then, last Friday, we got our weather window. “WINDS NORTHWEST FIFTEEN TO TWENTY KNOTS,” the friendly lady informed us. “CHANGING TO WEST TWENTY KNOTS THIS EVENING. SEAS CALM. IF YOU SAIL TODAY YOU WON’T DROWN, THOUGH YOUR BABY MIGHT THROW UP ON YOU IN A FOLLOWING SEA.”

“Let’s do it!” Peter announced. “Get that anchor up and roll out the towels. We’re headed to Gisborne!”

And despite the weather lady’s friendly optimism, we took every precaution. The first thing we did was move three hundred pounds of chain out of the bow, and shift it into the bilge. This, we hoped, would help Sereia to sail through waves, rather than just squat on them like a petulant toad. Then, I prepared to be demolished by seasickness. I made a pile of ham sandwiches, a big pot of pork and beans, and baked several loaves of bread.

As we steamed out of Tauranga harbour, we clutched our bread at the ready. There’s a statue of Tangaroa there, the Maori god of the sea. As you leave port, you say a little prayer and toss him some bread—or else. In 1950, the crew of the Ranui got a little drunk and chucked some empty beer bottles at Tangaroa, instead of his favorite food. Their boat smashed on the rocks, and twenty-two sailors were killed. Sereia wasn’t about to make the same mistake.


Peter and Matt raised the sails and headed out to sea. Silas sat down below, happily playing with Legos in our cabin. And I lay down my head and prepared to die. It’s only forty-eight hours, I reasoned. A person can throw up for two days and survive. How bad can it be?

And it wasn’t so bad, actually. Like so many worries and fears, the anticipation was worse than the trip. Our sail round East Cape, in fact, was fabulous.

First, we sailed North-Northeast, directly for White Island. White Island is an active volcano which last erupted in 2000, shooting boulders the size of Buicks into the surrounding sea. We approached it at dusk, when the sun set its slopes in sharp relief. Pale puffs of smoke shot above the cliffs, the crater’s rim curling like the claws of a crab.


Enraptured, I took my hands off the wheel. And promptly jibed the boat.

“Sorry sorry sorry!” I hollered, yanking us back on course. Jibing the boat by accident is a major faux pas in the sailing world, sort of like throwing up on yourself at an afternoon tea party. But Peter barely noticed. Because right then, a seagull the size of a Labrador retriever swooped past.

“Holy shit, was that an albatross?” Peter ran to the stern, pointing like a maniac. The bird, now headed toward the volcano, had an obscenely wide wingspan. You would have a difficult time parking this bird in a single-car garage.

We left White Island astern, its smoke signals floating in the gathering gloom. That night, as we approached East Cape, the wind kicked up and we sailed all night, charging toward the easternmost point of New Zealand in a rush of waves and foam.

Because I am a selfish troll, I claimed the last night watch, and sailed into the dawn on the morning of November 21st. I saw the sky blushing pink behind the Cape, and tried very hard to feel awe-struck at the thought that I was the first human being to see the morning. But irritating, rational thoughts kept invading my head, like the notion that the Earth is a sphere, and time zones are arbitrary lines drawn on a map. So I just sat there, shut up, and tried not to jibe the boat.

The island off the coast of East Cape, by the way, is called East Island, which almost makes a complete set: North Island, South Island, and East Island. Those early New Zealanders had a marvelous knack for metaphor.

Late that morning, I was sacked out in the main cabin, when Peter gently tugged my shoulder. “Orca,” he whispered. “A whole family of them. Come and see.”

I dragged myself on deck, and there they were. At first, they looked like dolphins, just fins breaking the surface of the water. Then they swam right at the boat, peeking at our propeller and rising to the surface to see who we were. A family of orca: mama, papa and a little baby.
We’d picked our weather window carefully, and now we were here, at the dreaded East Cape. The sea was glassy, the weather calm. And instead of fighting for our lives, we could feed Free Willy from the palms of our hands.

But the problem with weather windows is that they come to a close. Sooner or later, the bastard reloads. We saw White Island at sunset, we spied the first dawn, and we frolicked with whales. And now we had a quandary. We could keep heading south toward Gisborne, arriving in the middle of the night. Or we could tuck into Tolaga Bay for the night and have a good sleep, then make for Gisborne in the morning. We opted for sleep, and the next day the window was closed.

It wasn’t a gale, and there weren’t any mountainous seas. It was just twenty-five knots, on the nose, and six-foot swells, all the way to Gisborne. Sereia leapt and crashed, Silas hollered, and Peter tried to distract him with wolf noises below. I stayed on deck, dripping with spray, and tried to keep down my breakfast.

As for Matt, he just steered. He loved it. For about eight hours—though I admit I lost count—he wrestled that helm on course, steering us back and forth through angry seas as we tacked our way south to Gisborne. He refused to give up the wheel, helming in a 25-knot headwind , wearing nothing but shorts and a windbreaker. It was all we could do to keep handing him granola bars, watching anxiously for signs of hypothermia.



Then, at seven o’clock in the evening, we made it. It took us ten hours to travel twenty-five miles, but we tucked into Gisborne marina, just steps from the sportsfishing club, where bacon double-cheeseburgers and cold draft beer could be had for the asking.

“WHY are you sailing around New Zealand?” people ask us, and sometimes I have the same question myself. We’ve been cold and miserable. We shower infrequently, there’s mildew on the ceiling, and sometimes we wake up in the night, afraid.

But then, the window opens. We sail through a wilderness that most people can’t begin to imagine. The outlines are crisper, the colors are finer for the fear we surmounted to get here.

And I'll make sure we keep extra bread on board, and every few days, we'll toss off a slice for Tangaroa.

Renewable Energy

When you start your day coated in vomit, you know things can only get better. This was a comforting thought for me, as I pushed aside a foul-smelling baby and heaved mightily into a red plastic bucket.

“Oooooh,” said Silas, impressed at the volume.

“Sit back and observe, youngster,” I told him. “You’re learning from a pro.”

“Da DA!” Silas crowed, then lunged at the bucket. “Di di di di di !” He flapped his hands, hoping to splash in the nice warm sauce his mother had made. When I yanked it away, he looked at me inquisitively. Where’s my rubber ducky? he seemed to be asking. Where’s my toy boat?

“Cool it, kid,” I told him. “It’s five o’clock in the morning. We don’t splash in our vomit ‘till at least lunchtime.” At the thought of lunch, I heaved again, then handed the bucket up to the cockpit so I could set about cleaning up the mess.

Sereia can be a tough boat to sail on. Though the winds never got above twenty knots on this last leg to Tauranga, they were right in our face. The water was tossed with a short, steep chop, the sort of conditions that make Sereia jerk to a halt, like an angry horse bucking her bridle. There was no question of cooking bacon and eggs for the crew, or even a hot cup of coffee. It was all I could do to roll up our curdled linens, get out fresh clothes for Silas, and pour myself into my foulies so I could stagger out on deck.

Poor Peter, with his cast-iron stomach, entertained the seasick baby down below. I stood on deck, breathed deep, and tried to collect myself.

It’s amazing how seasickness will change your perspective on things. Rolling green hills become nightmarish cliffs of desolation and despair. A delicate pink sunrise looks tawdry and fake. I concentrated on the horizon, imagining a cool glass of ice water, and swallowed to push down the nausea.

“Do you want me to helm?” asked Matt, and after awhile I was grateful to give over the wheel.

Every boat should be powered by eighteen year-old. They are cheap, enthusiastic, and apparently indefatigable. Matt’s our latest crewmember, a high school swim athlete from Connecticut. He’s good-natured and easy-going, both crucial qualities on a small boat. Also, he has British parents, so he sounds like a world-weary aristocrat in a Henry James novel. This is very good for Sereia’s rep. It makes us look yachty.

He can also sail. While Peter read stories to Silas, and I lay like a wet washcloth on the deck, Matt took the wheel, helming for at least eight hours straight with nothing to sustain him but youth and a small bag of trail mix. Even after the waters calmed, even after everyone felt better and Silas could be left alone for a few minutes without fear of projectile milk vomit, Matt still wouldn’t relinquish the helm. Peter finally had to wrestle it away from him so he could pilot our boat into the tide-ripped entrance, and find us a safe place to anchor.


Now that we’re safely moored in the shadow of Mt. Maunganui, we’ve been coaxing Matt to stay with us. We discovered the farmer’s market, and began plying him with fresh strawberries and asparagus, hearth baked breads and local artisanal cheeses. He’s agreed to help out while we round East Cape, but after that, he says he’s got to go. He’s got some lame excuse about wanting to “travel” and “see the South Island.” I don’t know what it was exactly. I didn’t really listen.

And so we sit in Mt. Maunganui, waiting for our weather window to Gisborne and pondering East Cape. Our cruising handbook isn't helpful. The section for our next passage has a particularly shrill introduction:

"PASSAGES ROUND EAST CAPE SHOULD ONLY BE UNDERTAKEN BY WELL-FOUND YACHTS FULLY EQUIPPED TO OFFSHORE STANDARDS AND MANNED BY EXPERIENCED CREWS. TIDE RIP…OVERFALLS … DANGEROUSLY HEAVY SEAS.. THIS WHOLE AREA CAN BECOME EXTREMELY TURBULENT. .. HEAD WELL OUT TO SEA TO AVOID THIS TURBULENT AREA.”

“Why’d they have to write it in all caps?” Peter asks, looking up from our laptop in disgust. “They just write it like that to scare people.”

“Well, we’re a well-found yacht, fully equipped to offshore standards,” I counter. “We should be fine. And we have experienced crew.” I smile sweetly at Matt, heaping a little more French toast on his plate.

“Yeah,” Peter mutters. “Except for Silas.”

Except for Silas. And that’s what it comes to, always. When I wake in the night, fear squatting like a toad in my throat, I touch Peter’s hand and I know he’s awake too.

It’s not us. We’ll endure just about anything to cut through the ocean, feel the stars at our fingertips, sail a stiff breeze. It’s Silas, our little boy who cracks his head against bulkheads and cries when his milk comes up the wrong way. He doesn’t understand. We are fearful for him.

When we round East Cape, we hope to do so at dawn. Because of the way the world’s time zones are drawn, we might be the first people on Earth to see the morning. I’ll bring Silas on deck, and point out the rising sun.

If he’s not too sick, he might even enjoy it.







Then there's the fact that Silas enjoys poking Matt's face when he's asleep. Maybe this is why our crew feels the sudden urge to travel.

Clinical Opinion

There are a few things you’d rather not hear your pediatrician say, such as “cancer,” or “this is a fatal disease and there is no cure.” Then there’s this one:

“So. Is there any possibility you two are related?”

The doctor’s rust-colored hair was cropped close to his head, and he wore an extravagant blue bow tie, likely an affectation from the years (he made a point of telling us), “I practiced in Boston.” When he saw Silas he peered at him, tilting his head like a viper assessing a mouse for juiciness. Silas stared right back.

We sat down in his office, my heart thundering as though this pediatrician were about to administer an oral exam—which, in a sense, he was. “Do you think Silas can hear? What does Silas like to do? How does Silas play with others? Does he eat well? Sleep well?”

He skimmed through the medical records, scribbling notes on a separate sheet of paper, then looked up, continuing to stare pointedly at my son. Sensing the tension in the room, Silas crept behind my chair, then peeked out at the doctor with a tentative smile, not sure if he was friendly or not.

“He makes good eye contact,” the doctor declared. “But it’s not a social gaze. It’s a sort of a cold, hard stare.”

I didn’t want to be the silly mother in denial, so I kept quiet. Not a social gaze? I wondered to myself, knowing full well the way Silas’ smile can light up a room. You’re staring at him as though he were a Petri dish, growing an interesting species of mold. What do you expect him to do?

Then I began answering the questions. “Silas loves to chase balls and bottles, anything that will roll. He loves to spin things. I once saw him spinning a smaller pot lid inside of a larger pot lid, adjusting both lids very gently, to get them spinning together just right.”

“Obsessed with spinning things,” the doctor noted, jotting this down in his notebook.

Peter spoke up. “But it’s not like a mindless action. He’ll take the big basin we wash him in, turn it on its side, and get that rolling in a huge arc around him. He’s very concentrated, and he gets very frustrated if it isn’t just the way he wants it.”

“Short-tempered,” the doctor scribbled. “Easily frustrated.”

“He absolutely adores—and he has always adored—his books,” I ventured. “He can sit and listen to a stack of books, one after the other. And he has a rapturous love for music. Some of the mixes I’ve made for him, he’ll sit and listen to for an hour at a time, just entranced.”

The doctor ignored the part about the music. “When you read to him,” he asked. “What does he do when you read to him?”

“Do?” I was a little taken aback. What’s a toddler supposed to do? What was the right answer? “He smiles, looks from me to the book. He’ll turn the pages when we say ‘turn the page.’” Then I admitted, “But he doesn’t point to things. If you say ‘where’s the dog,’ he won’t point to it.”

“But he knows his books,” Peter interjected hopefully. “Antonia can start reciting the words from one of his favorite books—even when the book isn’t there!—and his face will light up. He recognizes the book, definitely.”

The doctor was writing furiously. “Cause and effect,” he announced, without looking up. “Would you say he has an understanding of cause and effect?”

I was eager, the little girl in French school again. I felt like raising my hand, anxiously calling oooooo I know this one! “Definitely,” I told the doctor. “From a very early age, as soon as we had him up at the table with us, he had this game he’d play with the water or wine glasses.”

Peter took over. “He figured out that if he bounced in his seat, the table would shake, and he could make the water slosh over the side of the glass.”

“Obsessed with water,” the doctor muttered, jotting this down on his pad.

“But isn’t that cause and effect?” I asked. “And turning the pages of a book because he wants to see the next page, isn’t that cause and effect? And flipping the light switch to see the light go on and off?”

The doctor raised his pale green eyes. He looked impatient. “Simple, rote behaviors. Repetitive flicking and bouncing. That’s all it is.”

I was quiet; I was wrong. But what about when Silas gets so excited to see what’s on the next page, and he turns it, at the right time, without even being told? That’s a rote behavior?

“His gaze, as I mentioned, seems very intense, but not social. Does he feel empathy at all, do you think? Does he smile socially?”

“Absolutely.” I told the doctor about the time Silas’ little friend Sammi started to cry, and Silas looked so worried and upset.

The doctor shook his head. “He was probably just responding to the sound. Is he hyper-sensitive to sound at all? Does he clamp his hands over his ears?”

“No, never. And he looked really troubled that the little girl was crying. Even her mother noticed it.”

The doctor pounced. “Ah, but was he troubled because the little girl was upset? Or because the sound was bothering him? He’s in his own little world, you see. Does he ever try to get your attention, does he seem gratified when you smile at him?”

“Of course,” I nodded emphatically. “Whenever I’m cooking, and he wants attention, he’ll pull on my legs or hang on me until I respond to him.”

The pale green eyes flashed. “But does he want the exchange with you, or is he just trying to get his own needs met? There’s a difference, you know.”

This didn’t make sense. “But what would a neuro-typical child do to get his mother’s attention? Aren’t all little children selfish? Aren’t they all trying to get their own needs met?”

The doctor snapped his head back and forth. “Even infants show empathy. It’s been shown in studies.” He turned his pale gaze on Silas. “Now let’s have a look at him. I’ll just measure his head, shall I?”

At this point, Silas was sitting in my lap, looking warily at the man with the notepad. He saw the tape measure come out, and he started to squirm. The doctor pushed his rolling chair towards us with gleaming leather shoes. He put the tape measure around Silas’ head. Immediately, Silas started squirming and twisting. I imagined he was whining in protest at this strange man, and his insistence on nineteenth-century phrenology.

“Hyper sensitive to touch,” the doctor noted. “He won’t even let me get near him. He hates being touched, doesn’t he?”

I had to disagree. “Not at all,” I protested. “He loves touch. He just hates being restrained. And we’ve seen several doctors in the past few days, and everyone keeps trying to put a tape measure around his head.”

“I’d be pretty pissed too,” Peter joked, thinly.

The doctor sat back, examining Silas’ face. “Round head. Full cheeks. A tendency to synophrys. He doesn’t really look like either of you, does he?”

Everyone says Silas looks just like Peter, but it seemed pointless to bring this up. I gestured to the space between my eyebrows. “I’ve got a bit of the Brooke Shields thing going. And Peter’s pretty hairy.”

The doctor lifted one of Silas’ feet and examined it. Silas, who had long ago decided he hated this man, kicked and howled. “Rather pronounced heels,” he murmured. “And very mottled skin.” At this point, it was clear to me that Silas’ skin was mottled because he was both Caucasian and cold, especially because he was wearing no pants. However, this seemed too obvious to mention.

The doctor was ready to grade our baby. We sat silent, breathless.

He reviewed his notes, not looking at us. “Without wanting to say the ‘A word,’ there is a possibility of autism. The lack of empathy, the inability to form social relationships, the repetitive actions.” He tapped his pen on his notepad, three short, sharp clicks. “From some elements of his appearance—as we’ve spoken about—there is a possibility of a genetic or metabolic syndrome of some kind.” He began pulling forms out of his briefcase. “I’m going to order a series of karyotyping tests, and we’ll see what comes up.”

He paused, looked at us. “This may be a strange question,” he asked. “But is there any possibility that you two are related?”

What the hell? I hesitated. “There’s a remote chance that we might have the same ancestors from Poland or something, but we’re not cousins or anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I know it’s strange, but I have to ask. In some cultures, you know, it’s accepted. And it can increase the possibility of recessive genes appearing in the offspring.”

“The offspring,” at that moment, was down on the ground, crawling over to the doctor. Perhaps he had decided to give this horrible man a second chance. As the doctor talked, Silas pulled himself to a standing position, drooling on what were undoubtedly an expensive pair of black pants. Instinctively, I started reaching for the diaper bag, to pull out a little towel and apologize. Then I stopped myself. The guy’s a pediatrician, I considered. Juicy babies must go with the territory.

“He certainly does drool a lot,” the doctor commented, distastefully. He edged his knee away from Silas’ wet chin. Silas reached out for balance, then fell backwards on his bum.

“He’s making five teeth right now,” I explained, scooping up my baby. “It’s part of the teething.”

“Maybe,” the doctor mused. “Or perhaps not.”

Oh, God. Is he going to tell us our child is a drooling idiot? We waited.

And then, he did. “In my clinical opinion, Silas is globally at a nine-month level for a nineteen-month chronological age,” the doctor pronounced. “This is what we call a global developmental delay.”

There it was. Our kid’s retarded. “So without sounding too Polyanna-ish,” I asked softly, “is there a chance he can catch up with his peers, with early intervention?”

The doctor studied me, tilting his head in that serpentine way. “Likely not.” His words fell around us like stones. Cold, hard, final. “We can’t test cognition in a child this young, but as a rough guide, we divide the chronological age into the developmental age.”

“So nine, divided by nineteen. Help me with the arithmetic and the implications.”

The doctor didn’t skip a beat. “He could have an IQ of 50.”

Beside me, Peter breathed out. “Wow. That’s heavy.” I looked over at my husband. His face was strained, in a way that perhaps only I know means he is holding back tears.

Silas was on the floor, flipping the pages of his caterpillar book, seemingly unaware that he’d just been assigned a future as a drooling cretin.

“What do we do with this?” I stammered. “I mean, where do we go from here?”

“What do we do?” Peter wanted to know. “How can I help my son?”

The doctor looked startled at our emotions. “There’s really not much you can do. Help him to get out of his own little world, if you can. I’ll leave you with the forms for the child disability allowance. You’ll get money now, every month.” He tapped his watch, pointedly. “I really must be moving on. It’s after one o’clock, you know.”

The doctor handed us forms, and a bill for $350. We tucked Silas’ things into our bags. We changed the baby’s diaper, pulled on his pants. I felt detached, as though I were floating in air.

Silas started to squirm again, impatient with the mean man and his cramped little room. Peter took him outside. I turned to the doctor. His eyes looked troubled, as though he wasn’t sure what it was he’d said to upset us. As though, I thought, he can’t read other people’s feelings.

I shook his hand. “Thank you for your candor, doctor.” What more was there to say?

We paid our bill, in cash, as required. We walked to the elevator in silence. We rode down to the ground level. We said nothing.

We floated to the car. Peter strapped Silas into his seat, removing his jacket first because it was hot and we’d been parked in the sun. He sat in the driver’s seat. He leaned over, putting his arms around me. We sat, rigid, for a moment, then our shoulders loosened. The tears came, hot and tight. I clawed his neck, screaming rage and fear into his shoulder.

After a few minutes, Peter started the ignition. He was wearing his sunglasses, but I saw his eyes were wet behind the lenses. I turned back to Silas. Will he ever love books? Have a stimulating conversation? Challenge someone’s ideas? Fall in love?

Will he ever say ‘mama’?

“Ready to go home?” I asked, and smiled at my son.

Silas looked at me, his face instantly alight with love and joy. His big, brown eyes looked clear and intelligent. He craned his head around, eager and curious to see more.

He doesn’t look retarded to me.

But what the hell do I know? I’m just his mother.

The Rumor Mill

Sereia got hauled yesterday, and it all went fine. Watching your yacht getting lifted out of the water by perfect strangers is always a bit nerve-racking, rather like how it feels to watch your child getting sedated by a doctor. In this case, it would be a dodgy-looking doctor, with a scraggly beard and a wild look in his eye, driving a giant bulldozer. But he treated our princess just fine. She’s up on blocks, scrubbed and ready for her surgery.

I mention this because when I logged on to my email account later that day, I had several messages from a concerned fellow cruiser. The gist of them was something like this: THAT YARD YOU’RE AT IS RUN BY A THIEVING GYPSY WHO’S GONNA OVERCHARGE YOUR ASS AND HOLD YOUR BOAT HOSTAGE TILL YOU PAY AND PAY AND PAY.

Naturally, this struck fear into my heart. I nearly texted Peter right away, and asked him to push Sereia back into the water himself if he had to, and sail away. But then I reconsidered.

Rumors get spread around the cruising community quicker than swine flu in a Mexican kindergarten. For a group of people that chooses to live such a crazy lifestyle, liveaboard sailors are surprisingly fearful. Remember, these are folks who cross oceans in Clorox bottles. You’d think we’d have balls made of stainless steel. And yet, we worry and fret, worry and fret, until it’s a wonder we don’t come down with swine flu ourselves.

Sometimes, being a paranoid neurotic can make you a better sailor. Peter is convinced that every system aboard Sereia is constantly on the verge of rusting out, breaking, or blowing up—and most of the time, he’s right. If he weren’t such a conservative sailor, we never would have come so far, so safely. Sereia would have caught fire long ago, blown sky-high by a toxic combination of propane gas, electrical sparks, and rum.

But then there’s the other kind of worrying. The kind where a fellow cruiser puts down his beer and leans in over the table, and tells you: “Mexico’s FULL of thieves, and the officials are ALL corrupt. Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile. All they’re after is your wallet.” Or: “New Zealand customs officials are out for blood. They’ll take ALL your food, and ALL your carvings, and ALL your woven baskets. You’ll be left with NOTHING once they’re done with you.” Or: “I know a guy who knows a guy who got cheated at that boatyard, so watch your back.”

The problem with this kind of fretting isn’t just that it’s often exaggerated, or just plain wrong. It sets up an expectation that can sometimes become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we left our boat for a couple of days in Acapulco, Peter and I didn’t tell anyone in the harbor we were going—we were too scared that all the local thieves would take that as a cue to clean out our boat. While we were gone, Sereia dragged anchor and smashed into two fishing vessels. That never would have happened if we’d just relaxed and asked someone nicely to look after our boat for us.

And when Peter checked into New Zealand, the customs agents who came aboard were nothing but charming and reasonable. Not only did they let us keep all our native art, some of which was made of filthy rawhide, but they were so busy chatting merrily with Peter that they forgot to confiscate half our food.

If you walk into a port captain’s office expecting to be cheated, you’ll come off as suspicious and hostile—which is a great way to incur an “attitude tax.” I know this, because as a naturally unpleasant person, I’ve incurred lots of them. Peter, however, has been coaching me on how to behave like a pleasant human being, and this has garnered us much better results with officialdom.

I don’t have time to be scared of rumors. I’m much too busy with real fears, like the fact that I haven’t seen a porcini mushroom since I’ve been in New Zealand, and I'm going into risotto withdrawal. I’m getting so desperate, I might have to bribe a customs official to get me some.

Only… damn. You just can’t bribe them here, like you could in good ol’ Mexico.

Here's a movie of Rei-Rei getting bulldozed around:

MAMA BEAR

Well, that little nautical love affair lasted for about an hour and a half. On Monday, as I may have mentioned, the diesel heater failed to light. The night was freezing cold, but that was OK. We were boat people. We were snuggling together in our berth like hot cheese, while the enchiladas and milk cooled in the bilge, or some such horse shit. And… hey! The toilet and stove worked great!

On Tuesday, the head broke. Again. Back to peeing in a bucket. While squatting and peeing on the freezing cabin sole, I began to have second thoughts about the bohemian glamour of yachting life.

By Wednesday, Silas’ cough was worse, and he was starting to sound like one of those wheezing babies in a made-for-TV movie about the dreaded plague. I took him to the doctor, and she noted that his ears were inflamed from congestion. She prescribed amoxicillin. Amoxicillin has to be refrigerated, but since we are carefree bohemians, we just sealed it in a plastic Ziploc bag, and stowed it in the filthy hole we call our bilge. We were essentially living in a refrigerator anyway, so surely that would work just fine.

Thursday and Friday, we didn’t work on the boat. Thursday was taken up with cleaning and repairing the borrowed house we’ve been living in. This entailed such projects as re-gravelling the driveway that we’d managed to tear up, replacing the electric tea kettle that we’d managed to melt, and replacing the $200 bottle of Courvoisier VSOP cognac that Silas had spilled all over the floor while batting it around like a wounded mouse. Yes, I did say TWO HUNDRED dollars. French imports are rather pricy in New Zealand. (And Silas’ new name, by the way, is “VSOP.”)

Friday was intended to be a day off, a “date” day, in which we enjoyed our boat and each other while our baby was occupied in nursery school. However, the romance was blighted somewhat by the fact that I still had to pee in a bucket. Also, by that point I’d caught Silas’ cough, and every time I was overtaken by a violent fit of hacking, I wet myself. Thank you, natural childbirth.

People are always saying that “being a parent is the most wonderful thing in the world!” Then they look at me expectantly and wait for me to chime in. Either they’re lying, or I’m a bad person, because I don’t really see it that way. Parenthood, as far as I’m concerned, is a lot like having a multiple personality disorder.

Friday night is when things really started to break down. Silas launched into one of his gurgling cough episodes, sounding like the consumptive heroine of some Puccini opera, and Peter lost it. He started frantically mopping at the walls with a rag. “This is dumb, this is bad, what were we thinking?” he started muttering to himself.

I peered at him from the galley. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s cold, it’s wet, our boy is sick—LOOK AT THIS CONDENSATION— this isn’t healthy, what were we thinking? Why are we doing this?” The right side of Peter’s face started to twitch alarmingly. He kept wiping the walls with his rag, trying to soak up all the moisture before it made his baby any sicker. But Sereia’s just an old plastic boat. The battle against condensation is futile.

Peter was already high on Dad chemicals. And then I felt the shift.

Just like that, Antonia receded into my unconscious, forgotten like an old childhood memory. And in her place, came... MAMA BEAR. Here is the thing about MAMA BEAR: you write her name in all caps, or she will rip your fucking head off. When you think of MAMA BEAR, you do not think of Teddy. You think Kodiak. You think eight hundred pounds and ten-inch claws.

“Don’t you even start with me,” I growled. “I am on a razor edge here, and I am THIS CLOSE to moving off this boat.”

Peter and Silas just stared at me. I didn’t even sound like myself.

“What you don’t seem to understand,” I snarled at my beloved husband, “is that I WILL GNAW OFF YOUR FUCKING ARM to keep this baby warm and dry.”

Peter blanched. “One week,” he urged me. “We’ll give it one week. Just give it a week, and we’ll see how it goes. Then if you want to move out, we’ll move out.”

I took a breath. MAMA BEAR retreated, and Antonia agreed. But Saturday morning, the skies opened up, rain poured down on Sereia, and winds gusted to thirty knots. We had this stupid idea that Silas and I would leave the boat during the day, so that Peter could work, but we didn’t really make provision for stormy weather.

So there I was, cuddling my sick baby in the main berth, while Peter poured diesel into our tanks. The floor lockers were opened up, so we couldn’t walk on the cabin sole. All the portholes were closed to keep out the rain. My head started pounding from the fumes. But there was nowhere to go. We were trapped. Silas started coughing.

And MAMA BEAR charged out of her den.

People who undergo a psychic break describe a feeling of unreality, as though they are moving in a dream. There’s a guy in New Zealand who’s just been convicted of stabbing his girlfriend 216 times with a pair of scissors, and that’s how he described it in court, as though he were looking down on himself, observing his own actions from afar.

Floating on the cabin ceiling, I watched as MAMA BEAR collected her baby, and held him out of the rain as she stormed into the marina office. I watched her make phone calls in a cheerful human voice, looking for a furnished flat to rent, short term. I watched her drive out to the rental, a cute little cottage with heat, refrigeration, and hot water. And I watched her rent it on the spot.

Peter was furious, at least at first. “I thought we were going to give it a week!” he protested. It isn’t cheap, after all, to rent a marina slip and also a furnished apartment. Puts a hell of a dent in the cruising kitty.

“It’s a done deal now,” I replied. Antonia had returned, and she was throwing Silas’ clothing into a bag. “Why didn’t you tell me how you felt before I agreed to rent the place?”

“It’s no use,” said Peter woefully. “You can’t argue with a mother when she feels her baby isn’t safe.”

Truer words have never been spoken. What is it they teach you when you go camping in the woods? Never, EVER get between a MAMA BEAR and her cub. Because before you know it, she’ll tear off your arm.

It’s much safer to let her rent her an apartment.

Dithering

Some of you may be wondering why it’s the beginning of July and I’m still going on about throw pillows and peeing in a bucket. Here we are, fiddling around at the dock, while sailing in the Southern Hemisphere gets steadily colder and more bracing. Low pressure systems are bouncing all over the charts like cats in a hot buttered skillet. And meanwhile, just to the north of us, Fiji’s got swaying palm trees , tropical sunshine, and a friendly military dictatorship ready to welcome us with open arms. So what’s the hold-up, already?

I can answer that question in two words: compression post.

Sereia’s mast, as you may recall, was installed by Taiwanese children who lived in an industrial sweat shop and didn’t get much time off to go yachting. As a result, they stepped the mast six inches forward of the supporting beam. The problem with this is that when Sereia is under sail—as she would be, say, when completing a 1,000-mile passage to Fiji—enormous pressure is exerted on the mast from the combined forces of wind and rigging. I’m no engineer, and I don’t know exactly how much pressure we are talking about. Lots and lots of pounds, though. More than you could lift.

And in the case of Sereia, that pressure is transferred to the deck, which consists of a very thin sheet of marine plywood, sandwiched between two relatively lame-assed layers of fiberglass. This is a very dangerous situation, one that could result in the mast smashing down through the cabin top, thousands of gallons of sea water surging through our home, and Sereia sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Which would be unpleasant.

If you’ve been following our adventures for some time now, you will remember that Peter solved this problem in 2005 by installing a steel compression post beneath the mast. We were particularly fond of this fix, because it had the twin virtues of solving our structural problem, and providing us with a stripper pole in the salon.

At the beginning of the cruise, the compression post was straight and strong. Designed in two pieces so as to incorporate the dining table, it kept us safe through 12,000 miles of ocean voyaging.

Here’s what it looks like now:



Not sure what the problem is? Let me help you with that:



Now that our crooked steel pole has roughly the same compressive strength as a cornflake, Peter’s been having Dad nightmares. Usually these involve the mast falling down on the baby, an unhappy scenario that also creates a hell of a mess. Clearly, the pole will have to be replaced. Peter is considering several options, such as using a solid length of wood, or retaining the same design, but with much thicker steel.

Thank God I’m not the captain. I’ve been having much better dreams. Like last night, for example, when I dreamed I was standing at the helm in nothing but a fishnet body stocking and a harness made of black webbing and stainless steel shackles.

Unfortunately for Peter, he’ll have to get us to the tropics before that dream can come true. Strange… I’ve never seen him so motivated in my life.

The Isle of Enchantment

It would be fair to say that apart from violent death by drowning, our family’s main concerns with taking our baby to sea fall into two categories:

a) We are neglecting our financial futures and therefore the child will be raised in poverty, and

b) The child will not be properly educated and will never fit into mainstream society.

As responsible parents, Peter and I take these concerns very seriously. So when one of our readers spotted Silas’ special talent, a gift with which very few children on this earth are blessed, we recognized his potential immediately.



Silas is the spittin’ image of Hervé Villechaize.

Let us pause for a moment to consider the ramifications of this discovery. Hervé Villechaize had an acute thyroid condition that stunted his growth so that he never grew taller than 47 inches. And yet, at the height of his popularity as Tattoo on Fantasy Island, he commanded a salary of $25,000 an episode. And that was more than twenty years ago.

Just imagine what Silas could do. He’s shorter. He’s cuter. And he’s perfectly capable of ringing a goddamned bell.

We can sail Sereia to Fiji, an archipelago encompassing more than three hundred Fantasy Islands. We can dress the kid in a suit. We can give him a bell to ring when the guests arrive. And once we get picked up by the networks, our midget superstar can start making his parents’ dreams come true.

You can sail pretty far on $25,000 an episode. That’s an awful lot of margaritas.

I can see the opening shot now:


There will be the naysayers, of course. There always are. My mother for example, the messenger of cheer and good fortune. “But what about FRENCH?” she’ll screech. “We raised YOU with private bilingual schools. Don’t you know that the best window for second language acquisition is before the age of five??!”

Of course we do. And that’s why we’re starting Silas early. Not with French, though. That’s so Old Europe. No, we’ve picked a much more relevant language. One that will help Silas adapt to his native land. Under our tutelage, Silas is learning Elvish.

There’s lots of time to work second language acquisition while sailing around the South Pacific. We have a stack of flashcards, and a little Elvish dictionary for children. Silas is so clever. He already points to the butterfly and says “Wilwarin,” and he knows the name for dog is “Hû.”

This is all part of a greater plan, of course. The networks will need a new twist for our Fantasy Island revival. That’s why we’re planning to film the whole thing in Elvish. We won’t even call it Fantasy Island. We’ll call it Tol en Gûl, The Isle of Enchantment.

There’s no need to worry about this family’s financial future. Once we hit Fiji, we’ll dress our baby in a tux and teach his to scramble up a belltower. There's no Elvish equivalent for “De Plane, De plane,” but Silas will make do. We’ll teach him to yell “Gûl Tink Thoron Nor! Gûl Tink Thoron Nor!” which, roughly translated, means “The magical metal eagle flies above!”

It'll be a smash hit. You'll see.

Letter from Mom, Part 2

The only student I have had who was raised on a boat hated it… If you go through with this and anything happens, yours and Peter's lives will be ruined… Think about what I'm saying because you are 34 now and the last thing you will want to do is count on Silas to take care of you in your old age.
Love, anyway ---Mama.

It’s so nice to have the support of family. Luckily, of course, Peter and I don’t need it, because the kinds of conventional choices we’ve made in life don’t take much in the way of courage or self-confidence. Sailing a small plastic boat across 12,000 miles of ocean, for example, or having a baby in a far-away land. Immigrating to a strange country, where the natives used to be cannibals, and they now eat Vegemite on toast. None of these choices was scary, or even challenging in the least. Sometimes, we forget we even have a family, but that’s just because we’re knocking back the scotch for breakfast while our child shivers alone in the bilge.

The thing about my mother is, no one can ever accuse her of false cheer. Tell her you’re going to live on a sailboat in the sunshine, and she’ll educate you on the malignant dangers of skin cancer. Send her a chatty email about what’s happening in your life, and she’ll respond with news about brain tumors and the pile of termite shit she found behind the living room couch.

What I should really do is hire her as a consultant. The very best sailors are the ones who expect the worst. They are prepared for every eventuality at sea: dangerous weather, broken equipment, sickness, mayhem and injury. And despite our best efforts at safety, I’m sure there are some things we’ve overlooked.

We should fly my mother to New Zealand, and ask her to come aboard. She’d take one look at the mast, poke it suspiciously, and ask, “What’s this big metal stick doing, standing up on its side like that?”

“That’s the mast, Mom. We use it to hold the mainsail in place.”

“Too risky. It’s going to crush the baby.”

“No, Mom, see? It’s very strong. It’s held in place with these stays, they’re steel cables under tension…”

“Oh, great, so when they break they’ll go whizzing around the boat like insane vipers and chop your arms and legs off. Then that stick thing will fall down and smash the baby. How are you going to take care of your smashed baby with no arms and legs? Did you ever think of that?”

“No, Mom. I didn’t think of that.”

“Well, you really ought to think about it, because you’re 34 now, and the last thing you want is a smashed baby and four bloody stumps.”

“That’s true. I wouldn’t want that.”

“So sell the boat.”

“Okay.”

“And get a job.”

“Okay.”

“And move back to California. And live with me. In my basement apartment.”

“Okay.”

"Then you'll be safe."

“Yes, Mom.”

And she's right. If we just stay on land, Silas won’t be crushed, or drowned, or raised in poverty. And everything will be just fine.

Fun With Flotation

Silas’ new PFD is a sort of floating straightjacket, serving the dual purpose of keeping his head above water and restraining him as though he were a dangerous lunatic. This is a necessary design feature, because toddlers share many key characteristics with the criminally insane: they babble nonsensically, have regular shrieking tantrums, and if permitted to do so, they will happily eat paint.

And so, as parents, it is our responsibility to keep Silas safe at sea. As we have never sailed with a baby ex-utero, we plan to fulfill this task with equal parts research and improvisation. I began this process months ago, by Googling such useful keywords as BABY SAFETY AT SEA and CRUISING WITH TODDLERS. Some of the advice I found was diplomatic: “Sailing with Toddlers is almost always challenging. Once they start crawling around, there is no stopping them.” Some, on the other hand, resembled a bumper sticker from hell: “KIDS DO FALL OVERBOARD.” But my favorite bit of wisdom came from a man who had clearly been there, weathered the storm , and barely escaped with his life. He wrote, simply: “It is toddlers that are the real stuff of nightmares.” Then his post ended abruptly, as though he had to go mix himself a stiff drink and lie down.

I also found this curious piece of advice, which made me wonder if any of these people had actually taken a baby to sea, or whether all of these websites were just a big practical joke on reckless idiots like me:

“the simple hammocks they make for hanging food stuffs and such in the saloon area is great for them, providing they are not too heavy.”

The simple hammocks to which this person refers are an excellent way to turn fruit into jam. They also work nicely for tenderizing an old leg of mutton. They are not, however, a practical place to stow things, unless you are deliberately trying to liquefy them. Stowing things in hammocks is a typical mistake for new cruisers, right up there with flushing tampons down the head and allowing a swarming metropolis of cockroaches to make babies in your V-berth.

Hammocks are picturesque, and they make people think of Treasure Island, and how cute Johnny Depp looked in Pirates of the Caribbean, parts 1, 2 and 3. People who have never been to sea imagine their hammocks swaying gently in the bosom of Mother Ocean, rocking their babies to sleep in a primordial flow. These people have never been close-hauled in a steep, short chop, or found themselves sailing downwind in a rolling swell. Sometimes the ocean’s rhythm is gentle and sweet. Other times, it’s like being in a car crash.

And so, Silas will not be sleeping in a hammock at sea. We will need to come up with our own solution. I am considering, for example, placing him in a safety helmet and an armored car seat, then through-bolting him to the bulkhead, then encasing the whole package in fifty feet of water-resistant foam. I realize, however, that this may make it difficult for him to play with his toys.

Has anyone taken a toddler to sea? Do you have any wisdom to share?

Reptile Mom

I can remember breastfeeding Silas when he was about four weeks old, cuddling his warm little body close to mine, and thinking idly about what would happen if I just stashed him in the freezer. Later in the afternoon, Peter would come home from his walk, shrug off his jacket and turn to me with a loving grin, asking, “Where’s the baby?”

“What baby?” I’d respond, engrossed in my book.

An hour would pass. Maybe two. Then, after awhile, I’d look up, smack my lips expectantly and say, “Could I get a snack? I think there's some ice cream in the freezer.”

The resulting horror show, of course, would send shivers up my spine. For awhile I worried that I was losing my mind, that these ghoulish fantasies were the result of a profound personality disorder. But in retrospect, I think I was just being a good mom.

It’s not that the sick little movies have stopped. They haven’t. Take the baby out for a walk, and my brain flashes images of a speeding car and a mangled stroller. Pass an angry-looking dog on the street, and I wonder what life will be like for my son with no arms and a chewed-up stump for a leg. Push him on the swings, and I imagine pushing just a little too hard, his plump, eighteen month-old body hurtling across the playground like an errant football.

A mother loves her baby with a deeply primitive, reptile love. There have been shady-looking strangers who checked into our backpackers, with missing teeth and shifty eyes, and I found myself considering how easy it would be to claw out their eyeballs with my bare hands. Now I understand that the movies in my head are a constant scan for danger, a way for my imagination to detect and head off any potential threat before it even begins to make trouble.

And now, in a few short weeks, we are planning to move our baby on a fiberglass boat and sail him through eleven hundred miles of open sea. Reptile Mom, as you can imagine, is having a field day. The fears, though they number in the zillions, can be roughly organized into the following categories:

1. WAYS YOUR BABY CAN DROWN TO DEATH

a) You can sink the boat,
b) The baby can fall off the boat,
c) A freighter can hit the boat, causing both a) and b) to occur simultaneously,
d) You can be struck by rogue waves, waterspouts, tsunamis, maelstroms, riptides, and/or the Ire of Poseidon.

2. WAYS YOUR BABY CAN BE EATEN ALIVE AND/OR POISONED BY VARIOUS TROPICAL ANIMALS

Such animals include, but are not limited to:
a) Sharks (various species),
b) Giant squid with really gross tentacles,
c) Rabid dogs,
d) Deadly sea snakes,
e) Venomous centipedes (I’m not kidding. They have them in Fiji.)

3. WAYS YOUR BABY CAN DIE OF SICKNESS AND/OR MALNUTRITION

a) Eating tainted food (including but not limited to: Hepatitis A, E. Coli, and Salmonella),
b) Eating brain-eating worms, (See related post)
c) Eating paint flecks, underwater epoxy, and/or fiberglass (with or without acetone),
d) Eating Spam.

4. MISCELLANEOUS THREATS

a) Being brained by a hard object down below,
b) Being roughly detained by the Fijian military dictatorship,
c) Sunburn and dehydration,
d) Falling coconuts,
e) Pirates.

But I’m looking on the bright side. We have no refrigerator on board, so it’s very unlikely I will freeze our baby. The chances of getting hit by a car while at sea are exceptionally remote. And if a shark tries to lunge at my little boy?

Well, then it will have to tangle with Reptile Mom. And I’ll kick its fucking ass.

Letter From Mom

Your blog is very cute, but all those people who are your devoted fans do not have a grandchild traveling in shark infested waters to an island which has already infected 2 family members with a permanently disabling parasite.
Love, anyway --- Mama





I concede that my mother may have a point here. The last time my brother went to Fiji with his family, they contracted a variety of parasitic worm that laid eggs in their spinal fluid and caused permanent damage to their central nervous systems. The parasite, Gnathostoma, has the unfortunate habit of gnawing at the pain centers in the brain, so that my brother and his wife periodically hallucinate extreme agony in various parts of their bodies. Also, my brother is occasionally convinced that worms are crawling under his skin and coming out his eyes.

But consider the upside. Once you have been diagnosed with a permanently debilitating and agonizing medical condition, the doctors are willing to prescribe all manner of fun pharmaceuticals. I am convinced that I would find new layers of meaning and metaphor in Silas’ favorite book, Ten Little Ladybugs, with the help of a hefty dose of morphine. True, the loss of gross motor control might make it difficult to hold the book, or indeed my baby, but these are the challenges that lend richness and meaning to life.

And has anyone considered the worms? Gnasthostoma isn’t actually intended to hatch in human beings. They are supposed to complete their life cycle in the gut sack of a leopard, a lion, or a sea otter. They are supposed to be prowling the rainforest, the savannah, or the high seas, quietly maturing in style until such time as they are born, fully-formed worms, in a steaming pile of jungle feces. They have no interest in living in the spinal fluid of a couple of California liberals.

Gnasthostoma , in fact, are unable to fully mature in the human body. They are forced to wander around, from liver, to spine, to ocular nerve, idly snacking and wondering why they can’t grow up. Perhaps that’s why I feel the odd stab of sympathy for them. Peter and I, it would seem, are roughly at the same level of maturity as these larval worms, without much of a plan beyond travel, adventure and eating delicious food.

Take it from my mother: to avoid infection with Gnasthostoma, you should refuse to travel to Fiji. While you’re at it, you should probably avoid Australia, Mexico, Ecuador, and pretty much all of Asia.

Or, you can boil your drinking water.