Patti couldn’t come aboard until I’d cleared customs. Excitement, sleeplessness and champagne made me a bit light-headed. My eyes flooded—and not from the wind. A helicopter hovered overhead (it later crashed but no one was hurt) and then a whole fleet of yachts was heading toward me. It was the start of the annual Ensenada yacht race. As the yachts passed Dove the crews shouted and waved welcomes across the water.
At eight o’clock—actually three minutes after—Dove nosed into a berth at the Long Beach Marina. I threw a line. Dove was tied up. I’d circled the world.
I was glad the customs men kept people off the boat. I sat on the cabin roof while newsmen fired their questions. I wish now that I could have given them better answers, but everything added up to one huge sigh of relief.
Anyway, I didn’t really know the answers myself.
“What made you do it?”
There were many reasons. I didn’t like school—but that’s not unique. I wanted to look at the world, at people and places, without being a tourist. I wanted personal freedom. I wanted to know if I could do something alone—something really difficult. But somewhere deep in my mind I felt there was another reason and that it had something to do with fate and destiny. How could I phrase that? How could I tell these newsmen that I had sailed across the world because I had to do so—because that was what I was meant to do?
Then at last Patti and I were alone. She drove me to our temporary home and hideout. She stopped the car at a traffic light (it was weird seeing traffic lights again) and she said gently, “Robin, it’s really just the beginning, isn’t it? I mean we have a whole new adventure ahead, a whole new life.”
The traffic lights changed from red to green. I was just so tired I couldn’t answer her. She understood. She just went on talking quietly.
“It’s fantastic to think that we’re not going to be apart again…and soon there are going to be three of us…and all I know is that life is going to be great….”
12
Child of the Isles
I WOULD BARELY reach the shoulders of John Wayne or Elliot Gould. I can make no rousing speech and I’ve never rescued anyone from a blazing building or a swollen river. Put twenty people on a stage and ask the audience to pick out the one most likely to walk on Mars or make a billion dollars or find the cure for the common cold and I’d be the last they’d choose. Or perhaps the nineteenth.
So when I saw myself in newspaper blowups under two-inch headlines and staring out of television tubes I felt both fool and fraud. The hardest thing was to fend off newsmen who besieged our small apartment in Newport Beach. National TV channels made attractive offers to tell my story. Appeals came from scores of colleges and schools asking me to lecture.
Then the letters arrived—by the sackload. Many were from foreign countries. We read every one, but we had no secretary and we couldn’t answer them all. Some of the letters touched us deeply—like the one from a crippled child who had followed my journey from his hospital cot, and one from a nun who said she’d prayed for me every night. A very moving letter came from a missionary in Taiwan. People of all ages wanted to know how they too could sail around the world, what boat to buy, what ports to call on, how to raise the cash.
Most letters were simple and sincere congratulatory messages from strangers. We were very grateful. There were telegrams and phone calls too.
One phone call came from the Ford Motor Company and invited me to be their “Maverick of the Year.” As the gift of a new car went with the title I could hardly refuse. A problem here was that I’d never learned to drive a car and didn’t possess a license. Patti promised to remedy this.
There was one contract I had to fulfill. National Geographic invited me to Washington to complete the third and last of my three articles for the magazine. They gave me a special reception in Washington and the chairman of the board, Mr. Melville Grosvenor, proposed the toast and handed over a huge colored picture of Dove. A chef had turned out a marvelous cake, frosted to show a map of the world and of Dove cruising the oceans. It seemed a pity to cut it. I enjoyed reunions with the magazine’s photographers and writers who had chased me across the continents, and I thanked them for all the help and the friendship they had given me.
Returning to Long Beach, Patti and I soon began to feel uncomfortable in the city life. We despised the factories which poured stinks and poison into the air, and I soon came across the worst side of human nature. On my voyage I had anchored Dove alongside grass-hutted villages and hadn’t even bothered to lock the companionway doors. But in Los Angeles harbor thieves broke into Dove and stole sails and much valuable equipment. In the Fiji islands I had walked among people whose grandfathers had eaten human flesh, but I first felt afraid of people when I walked at night in the streets of modern cities.
I made another trip across the country, to Detroit this time. The Ford people had arranged a press conference and I showed the newsmen a few slides and answered questions about the voyage. In the evening I was a guest at a dinner where the chief speaker was an astronaut. I was fascinated by his pictures of the moon. Before leaving Detroit they gave me keys to a new Maverick car (actually I didn’t pick up the car until I was back in Long Beach).
Patti and I returned to live aboard Dove at the marina. We had two big things on our minds—our baby soon to be born and what I was going to do next.
When we had been at Barbados we had received a letter from Doug Davis, one of the deans of Stanford University, who invited me to apply for a special Stanford scholarship. The dean had explained that the university was looking for students “with diverse experiences to balance out the students who had come through conventional academic channels.” When I received the letter I wasn’t much interested in returning to school. But now Patti and I talked over the idea again. I would know soon enough whether I could take campus life. I phoned the dean and he said at once that the scholarship offer still stood. We would go to Stanford in the fall.
With that question settled, Patti and I joined a special class with other young couples and were taught the skills of prepared (natural) childbirth. The films at first really shook me up, but I soon became fascinated. We were taught the system of rhythmic breathing and how a father could help his wife throughout her labor.
Some parents who had had their babies by what is known as the Lamaze method really impressed us. One of the fathers said: “After the baby was born an incredible calm came over me—it was like I was totally at peace with myself. I drove home slowly from the hospital because I wanted to savor the feeling. I felt extremely lucky to participate in the birth of my son. And my wife and I learned so much about each other too.”
We attended six Lamaze classes, and at night in Dove’s cabin we put in homework on the exercises.
In mid-June Patti’s doctor told her that the baby would not be born before the end of the month, and on June 19 he said it would be okay for us to go sailing and to spend the weekend off Santa Catalina island. We sailed to the island in her father’s power boat, the Jovencita. The weather was perfect and we stocked up the boat’s icebox with the last of our Galápagos lobsters.
After a two-hour trip to the island we moored close to shore. I was surprised when Patti refused to come diving with me. She loved diving. She said she was feeling a bit uncomfortable and decided to stay in the dinghy while I explored the ocean floor. It’s terrific diving off Catalina, which is famous for its protected garibaldi fish.
I swam back to the dinghy. Patti was on her hands and knees doing one of the Lamaze breathing exercises. She said, “I’ve got a rather peculiar backache.”
I splashed her with water. “What you need,” I replied, “is to loosen up with a swim.”
But she wouldn’t. “No, honey, I just don’t feel like it. I feel just pooped—and if you splash me again I’ll clobber you with an oar.”
I still didn’t suspect anything was wrong. She’d seen the doctor only a few days earlier. He’d been very pleased with her.
It
was toward midafternoon. The sun was hot, the water clear as glass. I went on diving and swimming around. Next time I looked over the side of the dinghy I felt the first nag of concern. I’d grown so used to Patti looking like an advertisement for Florida oranges. But now she looked rather strained. She was still doing her breathing exercises in the bottom of the dinghy.
“It’s probably nothing.” she said a bit too quickly, “but I’ve just had quite a strong contraction.”
“But the doctor told you—”
“Oh, I know he did. But—well—do you think he could be wrong?”
“He’d better not be.” I laughed. “I’m all for prepared childbirth, but not in a dinghy.”
She smiled. “What about on the rocks—like the iguanas. Remember?”
“Not on the rocks either,” I said firmly. “Maybe you should get back to the Jovencita.”
I paddled the dinghy across to the boat and helped Patti up the ladder. When she was settled on the quarter bunk she said she was fine. I left her for a while, but when I returned I found she was having a contraction.
She didn’t smile this time. “Wow, that was quite a strong one!”
Through the porthole the sun was sliding to the horizon.
“Couldn’t it be false labor?” I asked.
“Probably,” said Patti, “in which case what about some dinner?”
She actually did join Al, Ann and me at the dinner table. The Galápagos lobsters looked terrific. I knew how much Patti enjoyed them, but when she ate only two small mouthfuls I knew there was something really wrong—or really right.
Al volunteered to raise the doctor on the mainland. He got through on the radiotelephone but the doctor wasn’t at home. His partner came through eventually.
The partner was very professional, very bedside-manner. He said, “Now if you’re worried you can bring your wife to the hospital. But I advise you to wait. First babies usually take their time. It’s probably false labor. You just tell her to have a good night’s rest.”
The doctor didn’t seem to understand that we were at least three hours from the hospital, at Huntington Beach—two hours by sea and an hour through the Saturday night traffic.
As I gave Patti the doctor’s advice she was again seized with a contraction. It didn’t look like false labor to me. But we thought we’d better stick to the medical advice. Al and Ann went to bed.
At two o’clock I realized that unless we acted quickly there was a chance of the baby being born in the cabin of Jovencita. At the Lamaze classes they had told us about the things that could go wrong. I didn’t tell Patti how worried I was, but I woke up Al. There seemed to be three courses open to us. We could call the Coast Guard helicopter and fly Patti to the hospital, or we could try to sail to the mainland in the Jovencita, or again we could see if there was any chance of getting Patti to the tiny little hospital on the island.
We eventually decided to try the Catalina hospital. On the radio Al managed to raise the doctor on duty, who said he would bring an ambulance down to the wharf at Avalon, the harbor on the other side of the island.
Al couldn’t get one of the cruiser’s engines started, so we limped around the island on one engine while I returned to Patti in the cabin. The time between the contractions was shortening rapidly. Sometimes they were only minutes apart. Patti was really into her breathing exercises. All the things she had needed at the hospital were in the trunk of the car on the mainland. But she did have the stopwatch in her purse. The stopwatch is important equipment in the Lamaze method. The idea is for the husband to time the period between contractions so that he can tell more or less how far along the labor is and what exercises his wife should do. We started the full drill and I massaged Patti’s back to relieve the discomfort.
The ambulance and the doctor were at the Avalon wharf. I explained to the doctor how we had been trained in the Lamaze method and that we wanted to be together at the birth.
The doctor nodded. “Yes, yes,” he said quickly, “that’s all right.”
Patti was convinced the doctor was humoring her. She told him hotly, “I’d rather have the baby on the boat than go to the hospital and you not allow Robin to stay with me.”
She made the doctor promise I could stay with her right through her labor before she would get into the ambulance. She made him promise that he wouldn’t give her any drugs.
We were luckier with the doctor than we had dared to hope. He was quite young and had just returned from a spell of practicing medicine in Alaska. He had seen Eskimos have babies and he was enthusiastic about natural childbirth.
We looked pretty primitive as we shuffled barefooted into the eight-room hospital. We had no spare clothes—just a couple of toothbrushes. There was a nice nurse on duty who gave us a real welcome. Births are rare on Catalina. The nurse gave me paper overshoes two sizes too big and a white coat for the delivery room. Patti put on a linen thing with tabs at the back. The adventure of childbirth was suddenly exciting again.
Patti’s contractions were now separated by seconds. The nurse was puzzled because in the book she should have been moaning and crying out. Patti never whimpered. She was totally absorbed in what she was doing. I was amazed at her courage. She didn’t talk much. She sometimes held my hands very tightly. The doctor didn’t even unseal his hypodermic syringe.
Quimby’s birth was the most terrific experience of our lives. Actually it was quite a long labor, but whenever Patti forgot her different breathing exercises I was there to remind her what to do—slow and easy between contractions, medium breathing as the contractions moved to a climax.
I am no expert on childbirth and I know things can go wrong. But I know that Quimby’s birth is how a birth is meant to be.
Somewhere along the trail of man’s evolution to the electronic age the secret has been lost. For millions childbirth has become a horror of pain and fear and drugs. Most mothers in “civilized” societies are hardly aware of what should be the most fulfilling moment of their lives. Most fathers are hidden away in tobacco-filled rooms with worn carpets. Most parents go through hell until a stranger reeking of anesthetics tells them they have a son or daughter.
It wasn’t that way for us. I was there to tell Patti the moment Quimby’s head appeared. I was there to announce that our baby had ten fingers. Then, after a surge like the highest wave of a full tide upon a beach, I told Patti, “It’s a Quimby!” This was a name we had once mentioned in the Galápagos.
When Quimby came out of the darkness and saw the light of her first earth day she did not need to be slapped to force her to take a gulp of air. On her own she did it, because she was as drug free as her mother. Quimby was separated from Patti and I picked her up, pink, slippery, unbruised by forceps, crying with life.
There were three of us now, three of us bound together by love and the richest of all human experiences.
Patti’s face was wan and drawn, but she managed a marvelous smile as she reached out and touched her daughter’s hand. Then she reached up her arms to me and I buried my face in her hair. Both of us wept, not with pain.
“Thank you, honey,” she whispered.
“And you,” I said.
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” she said.
“I had the easy part.”
I left her then to rest and went out into the early morning sun, glistening off white cottages and the sea beyond. In front of one cottage there was a garden full of flowers, and near the wall a rose, pink and perfect, the dew still on the petals.
On sudden impulse I pushed open the garden gate, walked the short drive and knocked on the door. A woman, gray-haired and in a robe, appeared. She looked startled.
“There’s a rose in your garden, the one near the wall. May I have it? I’ll buy it,” I said.
The woman pursed her lips. “Oh, I don’t sell roses, and the one you’re pointing at is the best in my garden.”
“I need it for my wife,” I said, and then I told her of the events of the night and of
the birth of Quimby.
She listened in silence, then disappeared into the house and returned with some scissors.
“I’ve got some more roses at the back,” she said. “Your wife deserves more than one.”
“No,” I said, “just one—just that one.”
The woman walked across her garden and snipped off the perfect rose. I returned to the hospital with the single bloom. They’d moved Patti into a small room filled with sunlight, and with a view of mountains and very green grass—not another building in sight. Patti was lying quietly. The color had returned to her cheeks. She looked as if she’d been lying in the sun all day. She was not asleep. The nurse found a thin-stemmed vase and I put the rose on the table beside Patti’s bed. She didn’t say anything but her eyes followed me around the room and then settled on the rose.
That evening the doctor told us it was rare to see such an easy delivery in modern society. He questioned us closely on the techniques we had learned together.
The hospital people waived the rules and allowed me to stay in the room with Patti for the next two days. Then on Monday morning the three of us, Patti and I and the child of the isles, flew back to the mainland in a small seaplane.
13
Home from the Hill
IN THE FALL we put a “For Sale” sign on Dove and drove up to Stanford University, just south of San Francisco. It must be one of the most beautiful campuses in the world. We had grown so used to tropical vegetation that we’d forgotten what autumn colors looked like. We’d forgotten the smell of woodsmoke.
Our car was no longer looking Detroit-new because when I was learning to drive I had tried to apply the techniques of a rudder to the steering column and had had an argument with a gravel truck. We soon sold the patched-up car and invested in a retired mail van with about 100,000 miles on the clock. The old blue van better suited our personalities, and besides it could easily be converted into a camper in case we decided to escape.
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