Monday, March 22, 2004

August 1999 to March 2004

It feels hopeless to enumerate everything that we’ve

done for the past 5 years. It’s also amazing to think that’s how long it’s been

since our “live” update days, but I am committed to make it happen again.


Let’s give the basics: August 1999
toni was born... six month later I tried to write an update and this is what came
out:



If nature hadn't developed babies with such soft skin
and sweet smell, I would have had this update written ages ago. But my fingers
would rather be marveling at the softness of her cheek than tapping out these
letters on a mini keyboard schlepped from Hawaii to Hamburg to South of France
and back…

I mourn the loss of the non-mother Erika who could find
the time to sit and write. It's not that I don't find it now, but I suppose I
don't choose it. Writing with the baby on my lap has to be the number one
distraction I've had to face in my life. I knew it would be hard, but what makes
it hard is just how damn easy it is for them to be my number one focus. Perhaps
because I've never had a "distraction" which caused this little amount of guilt.

But hey, two paragraphs have already been executed and baby still sits
relatively quietly on my lap, fist in her mouth, big grey eyes staring at my
sleeves, putt-putting her mini farts, reminding me of the chili con carne I had
for dinner at our country western gig last night. She much prefers her hand to a
pacifier, my comfy cozy companion.

I could report about everything that has happened in
the last six months. About our visits to California, and now here in Hamburg.
About the birthing experience in the Windward shore of Oahu, about my excursion
with my sister and newborn daughter along the volcano coast of the Big Island.
But the problem once again is the incredible delicate sweetness of Antonia's
hands, which need to be held to believe. Another problem is the peach fuzz on
the top of her head that must be regularly stroked. Let's face it, the main
problem lately is that huge wide eyed smile, toungue sticking out, with new
cooing sounds and jerky, uncoordinated fibrulation that only babies can do. So
I'm stuck in the present.

Such is the curse and blessing of motherhood!

About a year later, we sold our Steel Pangaea to a
Swiss family who is now with her in New Zealand. Of course they may have
continued on further than that, and they have their own website in German,
www.pangaea.ch

In January of 2001, we bought
our new Pangaea in the
exact same marina we found the first one, Port Camargue in the South of France.
We celebrated the new sailboat by getting pregnant with Ari, who was
born 10 months later.
It has taken us that long, with plenty of living and working in between, to
prepare the new Pangaea for the next cruise, this time with the kids.


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