Thursday, August 15, 2013

A Month? We'll Take Two

The business of extending our visas so we can stay in Tonga for another month brings us to the big town of Neiafu, and back to internet range.

Discordantly enough, I've been reading We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.  Perhaps because I'm in the middle of that story, opening the Times at the internet cafe just now and seeing the news from Egypt took my breath away.

We are so unreasonably fortunate..touch wood...in what we find ourselves doing.

In the last week or so since we were in town our story has slowed down to the point of not being a story.  We meet some other yachties, we school and feed and hug and clean and instruct and scold the boys.  We watch the stalk of bananas on the stern arch slowly dwindle, and the basket of papayas disappear two and three at a time.  And!  If any of my work colleagues stumble on this, I assure you that I am working on my science work for long hours every day.  But that is the limit of our ambition just now.  And on a boat there is always a distraction...


Our latest milestone is that we find ourselves suddenly able to go snorkeling together as a family.

Who's cuter?

This works because Eric is happy to ride around on my back.  He doesn't have a lot of staying power, but he's completely happy and at ease while it lasts.


And now, instead of trying to take pictures of fish, I find myself taking pictures of my family underwater - especially, of course, Elias.





He is, as I've noted before, completely at ease in the water.  And of course he finds it completely unremarkable that he is so at ease - the water is just another place to be, much less overwhelming than town, in some ways...


Alisa and I, meanwhile, find ourselves looking at the bigger picture, the scope and direction of our lives together, and we start to mutter the Galactic incantation:  Don't wanna stop don't wanna stop don't wanna stop don't wanna...



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