What Blokes Know

Gender roles are ascendant among the Pelagic crew.

Alisa, looking a bit gobsmacked (as they say here) by the physiological rigors of first, parturition, and then, lactation, glanced up at me from her nursing station in the front room of our housesit the other day and said, "Oof, I feel like one giant breast."

Meanwhile, I have been spurred by the arrival of son number two, and the continuing, sometimes startling, precociousness of son number one, to think about what it takes to raise boys into balanced, capable, well-adjusted men.

Because, let's face it - if you're not careful (and often enough even if you are), one moment you have a delightful three year old boy, and the next you have a glue-sniffing sixteen year old wastrel on your hands.

So I've been thinking, in a disorganized sort of way, about what sorts of qualities I might try to instill in Elias and (eventually) Eric to help ease their path through teenagerhood, and to make them into the sorts of men that I can be proud of in my dotage.

Here's the first bit of essential male-ness that I came up with to pass along to the little fellows... Men Should Know the Score.  They should know what's going on, in a practical, man-of-the-world sort of way.  Men should be able to buy and sell things, they should have a grasp of how decisions are made in the world, and they should have a sense of how to bend those decisions in their direction.

Alisa is much too subtle and good-humored to ever roll her eyes at this sort of thing.  But she is also of that part of the world that is a bit dubious of anything so broad as "essential male qualities".  When I explained this to her I saw her eyes light up with a poorly-hidden smile that spoke volumes of her opinion about the whole thing.

Elias, meanwhile, is a beginning to identify with the male world.  When I visit on the front verandah with a male friend he comes marching out of the house, hands thrust manfully into his pockets, shoulders swinging in a John Wayne sort of walk, to "hang out with the blokes".

But I'm not sure that he's quite ready to absorb my lessons on desirable male qualities - when he gets over-excited he runs around the house, yelling to Alisa and her mom, "I'm a bloke, so I know what's going on!"

What Am I Doing Here?

Since Eric happened to be born at eight in the morning, right as the shift in the hospital was changing, there were two midwives at the delivery. But I was the only family member in the delivery room with Alisa. So while the midwives did their professional thing, I took my best stab at playing the role of loved one providing coaching and support.


Like most men of my generation, I took it for granted that I would be involved in the birth of my child. I was proud and happy to be there, and wouldn’t have been anywhere else. But during the final hour, when Alisa was approaching, and then inhabiting, the animal state that saw Eric into the world, it did occur to me how blind I was in the coaching role, with no personal access to Alisa's experience.

Which raises the point of how unusual it really is for male family members (i.e., non-doctors) to be involved in labor. When you consider the full range of birth customs around the world and through time, hasn't it nearly always been a woman’s female family members who helped her during labor? But, viewed through the standards of our time, my presence at the birth was completely unremarkable.  It shows you how malleable human social behavior really is.  And it's also a great example of how much we expect from marriage these days - I am fairly certain that my father's mother and father did not enjoy the degree of empathy (if you will) that would have seen her looking to him for emotional support during labor.

Oz Health

Well, it's true: no Australian has ever set foot on the moon, nor are they showing any signs of getting there soon.

But there are some things this nation does very well, thank you very much.

Eric's birth was our first in-depth interaction with the public health system here.  And we have been very impressed by the care that Alisa and Eric received, in particular by all the "extras".  In the hospital, Alisa got a visit from a physiotherapist to get her started on recovering from the birth, and a lactation consultant came by to fine tune Eric's latch-on.  And after we left the hospital, we received three home visits from nurses and midwives to make sure that everything was going well.  These weren't fly-by visits, either; the first nurse visit lasted two hours.  We didn't pay for these home visits, nor will Alisa pay for her post-partum physiotherapy/exercise classes.  Nor, for that matter, did we pay the hospital for the delivery.  There's no monetary profit generated by any of that stuff.  It's just part of a public health system that is available to all infants and moms in Tasmania.

I'm sure that no one in the US wants to hear about health care policy at this point.  But I will note in passing that the UN lists Australia, with its none-too-healthy general population (fatty diets, lots of smoking and drinking), as number 17 in a worldwide ranking of infant mortality rates, which puts it firmly in the middle of the pack of western nations.  The US, meanwhile, comes in at number 37, right behind New Caledonia, Brunei and Cuba.

So, when I want to play Aussie jingoist, I'll say to all our kith and kin back in North America - "Keep trying, you Yanks!  Someday you can have standards of public health every bit as good as the western world's!"

The Sailcover, and What Else Happened

Alisa sewed most of the day on Monday, and most of the day on Tuesday.  By Tuesday night she was finally finished with the sailcover.  Here she is, lying on the completed project, a little too tired to enjoy her triumph.  We went to bed at 11 that night.

Two and a half hours later her water broke.  By three thirty Wednesday morning we were in the pregnancy assessment room at the hospital.

At eight in the morning this guy was born.

We named him Eric Leo Abookire Litzow (the First).

Alisa and Eric are both doing fine.

Baby's First Budgie Smuggler

OK, we're officially in limbo - Alisa is now five days past her due date.  She had a visit with the midwife a couple days ago, and mentioned in passing that she had been trying to finish sewing a new sailcover for the boat before the baby came along.  "Well," the midwife said, "the baby's waiting for something - you go home and finish that sailcover."

That's what she's doing right now - sewing the final seam on the sailcover in the next room, Elias asleep, Alisa and her mom chatting companionably over the noise of the sewing machine.  And here's Alisa two days ago, doing the last fitting on Pelagic.

Meanwhile, the portable baby shower has continued - good friends in Sydney ("I think they'd be the most sophisticated Australians that we know, except she's a Kiwi," I say to Alisa) sent down a wonderful collection of gifts.  A highlight was this tiny little Speedo.

This very kind gift gave us, first off, the chance to say "budgie smuggler".  In this land where professional comedians starve in the face of all the competition from amateurs, Speedos are widely called "budgie smugglers".

It also got me thinking.

Alisa started it when she said, "We'll have to get Elias a Speedo, then all the blokes in the family will have one."  (Extremely dedicated readers of Once In A Lifetime will recall that I was given a Speedo for my first birthday in the tropics, though I have manfully resisted the urge to share any pictures.)

"Oh, hey," I said.  "I think you're onto something."

"Hmm?"

"Well, you know how it is these days - pretty much everyone we know is out sailing the world, and blogging about it, and blathering about how they're 'gonna write a book'?"

"Uh-huh?"

"We clearly need something to set ourselves apart."

"Uh-huh?"

"Well, there used to be the Swedish Bikini Team in those beer commercials in the States.  Maybe we could do something along the line of the Pelagic Speedo team?  Me and the boys.  You know, we could do public appearances, marina openings, that sort of thing."

"I'm going to finish that sailcover."

First Draft

This morning the excitement level had lifted noticeably.  Elias was running around the house and babbling nonsense from the moment he got up.  Alisa was extra animated, and I felt it too, a constant buzz in the back of my skull as I worked through the morning, a sense of immediate change in the offing.  I started to wonder - we were all picking up on some subtle clue of biology that told us the moment was nigh, or was it just the psychology of suspense that was making us all antsy?

Either way, nothing happened.

~~

I haven't got Pelagic on the market yet, but today I did manage to finish the first draft of my book about our Pacific trip, the other task that I was aiming to have completed before Little Baby Brother came along.  The real action I have decided is in the all-important second draft, which is still months away.  But, as Alisa's mom pointed out, you have to finish the first draft before you can start on the second.  And it was a fun moment to finally print out the whole thing.  One hundred and eighteen thousand words - not a doorstop, but not a magazine piece either!

Baby Shower

Well, you know how it's meant to be with the second baby - people naturally don't make as big a fuss as they did for the first.  That, and the fact that we're a long way from anyone who we've known for more than three months (except Alisa's mom!), meant that the idea of a baby shower for Alisa and Little Baby Brother hadn't even crossed my mind.

But a box arrived from Kodiak today.  And when Alisa opened it, she found a portable baby shower inside: a collection of very sweet gifts for her and the Newest Addition, from some of our very good friends back in the home port.

You know how much effort it takes to get together this nice a selection of gifts and get it to the other side of the world in time for the big event, for friends you haven't even been in regular contact with for almost three years?  A lot.  There are no people like our friends in Alaska. 

Meanwhile, yesterday was the day before the due date.  Alisa stopped by Pelagic to replace a broken gear in the main halyard winch and to check the fit of the new sail cover.  And right now it's 2300 on the due date, and she's knocking out a few more seams on the sail cover project.

Cruising dudes of the world, continue to eat your hearts out!

~~

I've overheard Alisa telling people "I'm as ready as I'm gonna be."  I guess I am too, but I also have a father's feeling of contingency about what's about to happen.  This new little dude-to-be is still so hypothetical.  I look at Elias, who is such a particular person, and such a force in my life, and realize that my imagination would never have been equal to the task of predicting him, of describing his individual self, before he was born.  Little Baby Brother is still in that stage of pure mystery, but very soon he will be a pure fact, and then none of us will quite remember what things were like before he was around.

For Elias, with his much more circumscribed life experience, our future as a family of four is even more hypothetical.

  If I run, he says, will he want to run too?
  Yes, I say.
  If I play, will he want to play too?
  Yes.
  If I pretend to hunt, will he pretend to hunt too?
  Yes.
  Ummm, if we ride in the car will he want to ride too?
  Yes.
  Will we let him?
  Yes.
  If we run errands will he come too?
  Yes.
  Why? He asks. Whywhy?