My oldest son took me sailing today, for a change. For the last ten years, I have taken him traipsing everywhere I went—museums, parks, stores, libraries, beaches, marinas, laundromats, zoos—you name it.  His brother, a mere thirteen months younger, was not far behind.

But today, for the first time, he took me. He didn’t’ take me far—just a quick trip away from the beach and back in a small sailboat, but it was a turning point in our relationship just the same. I am excited about the way our relationship is changing, even when we experience growing pains like sarcasm or stubbornness. He has the subtle wit of his father, and the poetic sensibility of his mother. Our interactions are reaching new levels and we are beginning to glimpse what he will be like as an adult. He will be a full-fledged crew member in just a few short years. I am very proud of him.

Aaron, too, is showing signs of growing independence. Today marked the last day of summer sailing camp, and family members were invited to come along as passengers with a junior sailor. I had the pleasure of watching Aaron show Sam the ropes as he competently took him out on the water in a pram for the first time.

Sailing camp was a success on many fronts. We are happy that the boys and Sarah had the opportunity to learn basic sailing skills in beginning and intermediate classes. Their understanding of wind and sail will be intuitive—something I envy. Additionally, they are building confidence and a love of the water, something that will make them even better crew for Take Two.

I’m getting antsy. Having become accustomed to freedom and constant change, I’m feeling a bit stagnant in this marina slip. I’m no longer afraid of getting sucked into a land life and not leaving. Now I’m positive I will want to go out there again when the time is right. Heck, I want to go right now.

There are some impediments to our heading out into the great blue yonder at this very moment, though, so, as usual, I need to cool my jets and practice patience. Aside from a few minor things, there’s nothing keeping us from day trips or even an over-nighter. The weather in August in Florida is not very conducive to sailing away. Heat and hurricanes aside, there just isn’t that much wind on the Florida gulf-coast when the water temperature and air temperature are so close. It’s great weather for anchoring and swimming, though, so I’m looking forward to that.

As for a date of departure, that may be awhile. We have checked a few substantial things off the list we made at the beginning of the year: have a baby (check), repair structural damage to boat (check), pay exorbitant tax bill (check), renovate interior of boat (check), buy washer/dryer (check). So now Jay’s out with his nose to the grindstone, working to replenish the cruising kitty. When the time comes, we’ll have to decide whether to use that money to do a few more things on our list or to travel and put the projects on the back burner. It’s hard to stop when you’ve got momentum and the boat is looking so good—and when you find local workmen who are skilled and dependable.

On the flip side, many things that we want to change we have learned to live with, and we could manage another season without fixing them. If it comes down to buying a heater so we can survive a Florida winter or using the money to head South, I will vote for the latter.

One thing affecting a DOD is Jay’s work. One must make hay while the sun shines and that may mean working for six months or a year so that we can save up to travel again. Another question that has an impact on our plans is when will we be ready to travel with Rachel? If I’m trying to nurse a baby, homeschool the kids, wash diapers, feed everyone, and keep house, what kind of a first mate am I going to be? Do we need to take on crew? If the answer is yes to crew, then we’re back to the projects question because we’d need to make a habitable space for an extra person.

The answers to the questions “when/where are we going next?” are veiled in mystery, and until we have done the day-in-day-out for a while, we aren’t going to know. That means my planning and implementing our next year of homeschool and taking care of things on the home-front without complaining. But I miss the blue water, the unimpeded sunset, and the clear starry skies at night.  I feel the lines chafing and I just can’t wait to see what the next journey will be like.

I have always had a love affair with hammocks. Something about the easy way that they hang invites one to really relax. My parents always had one strung between two trees in the yard or two posts on our back porch—I even slept outside one night, imagining what sailors of old felt like swinging in the dark below-decks. I have happy memories of a certain hammock strung between palm trees in the Florida Keys from a girlhood vacation. Then there was the hammock that hung from Georgia pine trees in the backyard of our first house—I sat with my babies in that hammock and spent many happy hours snuggling and snoozing. So it was with nostalgia and admiration that I sat this past winter in the Bahamas in a hammock chair swinging from a Casuarina tree on Volleyball Beach on Stocking Island. It was a beautiful hammock with a beautiful view.

One day as I sat there chatting with some young folks who had pulled up in their dinghy, I learned that the maker of the hammock was a young woman named Snow, and that she was staying on a sailboat in the anchorage. Later I met Snow and complimented her handiwork. She has a company called The Sailor’s Bed and works in a coastal North Carolina town making and selling her hammocks. It was perfectly logical, then, to order one of her hand-made hammocks to string between the supports of our arch and “hang out” in the breeze above the water.

The hammock is everything I had hoped for—a relaxing place to sip a glass of wine while the sun sets, or to read and rest on a weekend morning. It is like a little oasis in the middle of the very busy, very noisy household of which I am a part, a one-hour vacation getaway. The joy I get from that hammock is augmented by the fact that I met the weaver—that she, like me, loves sand and sun and water and boats. Like everything else about our lifestyle, so much of what we enjoy has to do with the who and not just the what.

While I am certainly grateful to the dads in our family for raising Jay and me to be independent, contributing members of society, I would like to use this time to say what a great dad Jay has become to our children. We've been doing this parenting thing for about ten years now, and both of us have grown a lot during that time. Jay has always been the gentler of the two of us, and it is one of my secret joys to see him with a baby. He prefers spending time with the talking and walking kids, and with those he is wonderful, too. Aaron summed up how they feel about him this week while their dad was working in Boston: "I look up to Dad, and it's not just because he's tall." I guess that's how I feel, too–Happy father's Day, Jay, and keep up the good work.

Some poor misguided person called me “laid back” today. She was watching my kids play in the pool and commented about how relaxed I seemed, considering that my four-year-old daredevil did a flip a little too close to the edge (he was summarily scolded and given a time out). Truth be told, I am one of the most high-strung, perfectionistic, controlling people I know. My poor children will be lucky to survive my over-achiever approach to mothering and home-schooling. That’s the truth.

Perhaps what she saw as “laid back” was actually an intentional stifling of my natural instinct to protect at all costs. I realize that children cannot grow up unless you give them some space in which to do so, but giving them that space requires a willingness to look the other way when they are doing something risky. I stop things that are downright dangerous or disobedient, but probably allow a lot more than most parents these days. This discussion reminds me of an old blog entry I wrote but never posted. And so I give you, from the archives, my two cents’ worth on parenting.

Free Range Kids (July 31, 2010)

Lenore Skenazy, the New York Sun columnist who coined the phrase “free range kids,” allowed her 9-year-old son to find his way home from the city on the subway, and then wrote about it. Her column sparked a controversy that deeply divided two camps: those who said “you should go to jail” and those who countered “you should receive a medal.” I’ll give you one chance to guess which response we choose.

The controversy hints at an important underlying question: is the world inherently more dangerous now than it was a couple of generations ago, when children were sent out in the morning and called in for supper? Or are parents just more neurotic than they used to be? Even when I was a kid in the 70s, we walked to school, the older children looking after the younger ones, and kids were allowed to roam in the woods and in their neighborhoods, largely unsupervised and parents didn’t worry the way they do now. An older person I know said he thought that the world was more dangerous—child molesters at one time were locked up for life, or were put to death, so maybe there are more of those types running around, imaginations fueled by internet filth. Of course, parents can now look at an online database and find out where the registered sex offenders live, so maybe an increase in information sharing makes us more paranoid, too. I realize that this is only one of the many dangers that threaten children, but whether they face more of them or we are more protective (or both), children in our demographic are raised differently now than they were—their lives are more scheduled and they enjoy less free time to explore and discover their own limitations. Or worse, they are so badly spoiled that their potential is lost or wasted.

My oldest son, Eli, went with my brother and his kids to a cousin’s baseball game not too long ago. Preoccupied with the game, my brother didn’t realize that the crowd that was gathering under the lamp post was staring at his nephew, who had shinnied to the top, the way he does a coconut palm or the mast of our boat. I probably should have scolded him, but actually I felt rather proud of his climbing prowess. People are always surprised and often dismayed by what our children can do. When Sam, our youngest son, was 2, he would dive for coins in the swimming pool at our marina. Inevitably, someone always freaked out and thought a baby was drowning. They looked at me incredulously when I reassured them that my toddler was just fine—then he would come up with a handful of nickels and pennies. Our daughter Sarah has many times shocked folks in an anchorage with her aerial acrobatics wearing a climbing harness to swing around the rigging.  Aaron, our second son, rebuilt a carburetor on an outboard motor at 7, and got his Florida boater’s license at 8, which makes him independent in the dinghy. I mention these things not to boast about the children, because I don’t think they are unusually gifted, though I do admire them. I think they are doing what all children would do if they were allowed the time and freedom to explore their interests and try daring deeds.

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Without the hindrances of tyrannical school and sports schedules, TV, video games, iPods or other gadgets, our children have been allowed to pursue various activities, to be bored occasionally and have to use their imaginations to entertain themselves, and to try stunts that make onlookers gasp. They have, in short, been allowed to find out for themselves what it is they’re made of. That used to be one of the main goals of child-rearing, but it seems that quality is now rare. What we do have in abundance now is the “helicopter” parent, who hovers at the periphery waiting to zoom in and help solve whatever problem they see, real or imaginary.

Busy parents have traded good training for micro-managing. Ironically, we are very protective of our kids (some would argue over-protective)—we guard closely what they eat, who they play with, what they learn, and what they watch, things which affect their health and character development. We set high standards, scold, spank, and offer rewards for good behavior, although those things are considered old-fashioned. Based on children that we observe in public, we think most parents have gone to one of two extremes: allowing too much freedom and not enough guidance, or providing so much guidance that their children feel smothered. What results is children who rebel: either to get the attention they desire from permissive parents, or to get the freedom they need from overbearing ones. Ideally, we’d all find that delicate balance between making children safer through rules and training and still leaving them some wiggle-room to test themselves and grow.

What we want for our children is for them to have a realistic picture of both the dangers and joys of life; smothered kids are neither prepared to face evil nor are they able to appreciate true freedom, and spoiled kids use their unlimited freedom to harm themselves and others. We also want our kids to know themselves and waste as few years of their short lives as possible trying to figure out what they want to do with their time on planet Earth. We want them to actually grow up—take risks and fall flat on their faces, get up again and learn from the experience—to become interesting and skilled and independent. We want them to have earned enough confidence that they will someday follow their dreams. Living the way we do is conducive to achieving these goals, though we recognize that there are no guarantees and it will be years before we see the fruit of our labors. In fact, it will take nothing short of a miracle—and fortunately, we still believe in those.

I promised details about Rachel’s birth for those who want to read them. WARNING: this essay contains a description of natural childbirth, so if you can’t handle it, don’t read it.

Rachel is two weeks old today, and the most pleasant baby we’ve had. I don’t know how much truth there is to the theory that the kind of birth experience a baby has affects his or her personality for life (it certainly affects the mother's willingness to have more children), but Rachel would support the theory that the more peaceful the birth, the more peaceful the baby. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that we’ve done this four times before, and we’re more relaxed. I am certain that the mother’s feelings during pregnancy and after birth are reflected in the baby’s disposition. All I can say about that is, “Poor Eli.” No wonder our first kid is so keyed-up.

The previous four children were born without drugs and with minimal intervention, under the care of a midwife, but in a hospital setting. There is a time and place for medical attention, for medication, and for “meddling.” Natural, uncomplicated birth is not it. It took me a few babies to realize I do not need to be in a hospital, just relatively near one in case of emergency. I have a history of late babies and long, slow labors. Once I figured out that it takes my body a really long time to prepare itself for the last phase of labor, I just stayed at home until it was time, or, in a couple of cases, allowed the midwife to start an induction using Cervidil (to ripen the cervix), but I never actually needed a Pitocin (IV) induction. I’ve also condoned various interventions to speed things up: stripping membranes, breaking my water, enemas—you name it and we’ve tried it. But I’ve never had an epidural (no needles in my spine, thank you very much) and don’t mind suffering a little to bring a child into the world. In fact, I would say that the suffering is proportionate to the elation one feels afterward.

But this time, I wanted something different. Having a baby in the hospital is like going to McDonald’s at lunch time. A hospital is a place of busy-ness—people running around in scrubs, officiously doing their duties and following protocols. The L&D room is needed for the next customer, so taking 24 hours to have a baby makes one a nuisance. Also, the nurses are used to 90% of women wanting to be drugged immediately, and then they rest comfortably hooked up to a monitor that can be seen remotely at the nurse’s station down the hall. These moms require very little. The mom going natural is always asking for things or refusing things, and some nurses feel rather put out. And when it’s time to actually have the baby, the busy-ness increases: a team of strangers in green swarm into your room and turn on bright lights and start unpacking mysterious packages. The end of the bed breaks away and when that wee thing comes into the world, it is a shock of lights, noise and air conditioning. They are whisked away to a corner of the room to be poked and cleaned and checked. No wonder they scream their little heads off.

As we have gotten more organic and natural in everything we do, it makes sense that this assembly-line approach to birthing babies would become less acceptable to me. When I found Rosemary Birthing Home (www.rosemarybirthing.com) in Sarasota, I knew that aside from having a birth on the boat with an island midwife—we’re not quite there yet—this would be the best option for a peaceful, natural birth for our fifth child. I mean, my midwife’s name is Harmony for heaven’s sake! We were right. There was no rush, no sense that we were a burden, no unnecessary meddling.  Instead of McDonald’s at lunch time, it was like going to a friend’s for a home-cooked dinner and staying to open another bottle of wine. The birth was no shorter than normal, but aside from my water having broken (which starts a 24-hour intervention clock ticking) the experience was so much more relaxing. Labor in the courtyard, in the tub, in the shower, in the rocking chair, in the kitchen, in the garden, on the boardwalk along Sarasota Bay—no one was telling me what to do or how to do it. Not that we didn’t try to speed things up a bit—I went to the acupuncturist, tried herbs and homeopathy, even drank a Castor oil smoothie. The difference for Jay was marked, too. He hates hospitals, and was a little wigged out after Sarah's arrival (at 9 1/2 lbs. she was hard to get out). He bowed out of Sam’s arrival, leaving it to a team of girlfriends instead. But he was more comfortable in the homey atmosphere at Rosemary and was on hand when Rachel arrived, just outside the door. Even Sarah, at seven, felt comfortable and was there to see her sister’s birth.

In the end, Harmony gave me the extra time I needed to have the kind of birth I wanted to have (we were close to having to transfer to Sarasota Memorial), and when Rachel finally decided to show up, she came fast. So fast, in fact, that I didn’t even make it to the birthing tub and had her in the shower, where I had been laboring for the pain relief of pressurized hot water. When I picked her up for the first time, she wasn’t crying. She was quiet and alert, looking around and wondering where she was. We spent the first couple of hours of her life just looking at each other, holding her in the warm water of my (undefiled) birthing tub, nursing, and generally basking in the post-childbirth glow. (Man, those hormones are like a really good drug.) We had Rachel the night of May 2nd, and at midnight, we broke out the chocolate cake and candles and celebrated Sarah’s 7th birthday on May 3rd! I had plenty of time to rest and recover (Harmony herself made my breakfast the next morning after Jay had gone with Sarah to pick up the boys) before heading out to my mother-in-law’s. It was, aside from the part of childbirth I’m already forgetting about, a totally pleasant experience. I will never have another McBaby again (if I have another at all). I never cease to feel amazed at the miracle of new life—thanks be to God for answering all our prayers for a smooth delivery and a healthy baby!

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Pictured (l-r) Priscilla, the apprentice midwife, Tarin, friend and birth coach, me and Rachel, and Harmony, midwife