Random Motherly Thoughts

Yes, I'm a mom. I'm also a step-mom, a grandmother, a mother-in-law and a godmother (not the fairy variety). I'm a sister, a sister-in-law, an aunt, a great aunt and a great-great aunt (yikes, that really sounds old), a cousin, and oh yes, how could I forget? I'm a wife and a First Mate. I'm called Marcie, Sis, Auntie, Nana and sometimes, sweetheart. With all those relationship titles and monikers, how could I be anything but happy that I'm such a fortunate woman?

There have been times in the past when our house was full of kids … our kids and other peoples' kids. They came, they went; sometimes they stayed for awhile. There were trying times that I wasn't sure we'd get through and happy times that I wished would never end. Looking back, I'm so glad that all of these kids, these grown adults now with kids of their own, were part of my life. I'm glad to be a Mom and a Nana and an auntie. I can't imagine not being a sister nor David's wife. It's made me who I am and I'm thankful.

I've certainly made my share of mothering mistakes. My kids still remind me of that fact, though less vehemently than they did when they were 15. There are no manuals that come with kids. You've got to figure it out as you go and I didn't always figure it quite right. The kids turned out fine though … despite my lapses in perfect mothering.

Whether you're a mom or not, if you're a woman, I'm sure you've done some mothering in your life … nurturing, counseling, encouraging, consoling, loving. It doesn't take a biological event to be a mom, it only takes a heart.

Happy Mother's Day!

Easter in Trinidad

It's Easter Sunday in Trinidad. The Trinidadians take their holidays seriously. Banks, shops, the boatyard, etc. were closed on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, plus today, Easter Sunday, and they'll be closed again tomorrow, Easter Monday. The other day, I asked a young woman in the boatyard office, a native Trinidadian and a woman of color, if the Easter Bunny comes to Trinidad and how she planned to celebrate. She said “No bunnies here. I'm going to sleep for four days. That's what you do on holiday.”

I later spoke with Tammy, owner of the B&B we'd stayed at. She's a Syrian who has lived in Trinidad for 50 years. She's a devout Catholic and planned to spend the holiday with her son and his family. She participates in all the Easter and pre-Easter religious and secular celebrations. She got her palms on Palm Sunday and bought Cadbury chocolate bunnies for her grandkids. She'd baked hot cross buns in anticipation of a big, traditional Easter Sunday ham dinner. She'd celebrate Good Friday in church and attend Easter Mass on Sunday with her family. The local mall, she informed me, had an Easter fashion show and local children would participate in an Easter parade, sporting their newly created Easter hats.

We listened to the Chaguaramas cruiser's net and other than announcing the weekly Sunday dominos game, there was not much going on to celebrate Easter. Winter and spring are dry here. April showers do not bring May flowers. We're told there's really not much noticeable change in this hot, humid weather until the end of May when the rains come … then it's hot and rainy.

I remember other Easters aboard. One time we were in Ecuador on the hard. I colored and decorated eggs with my Swedish friend, Ulla aboard Lovina. We gathered all the cruisers together on Easter Sunday for a huge potluck dinner and the marina accommodated us by setting up tables and chairs in the parking lot. Another Easter, we were sailing to the Galapagos and I cooked a canned ham en route. Yet another year, we were in a secluded anchorage in New Zealand's South Island by ourselves and ate mussels and fish. In Australia, there were chocolate bilbies, not bunnies. Down under, Easter represents the beginning of the austral autumn/winter season … not as joyous as the advent of spring.

We have always found a way to celebrate Easter. Though we're not religious folks, we do acknowledge the change of seasons and the coming of Spring, even if the change is negligible where we are. We remember the long, cold, hard winters growing up in Massachusetts and Colorado and the absolute joy (and relief) that Spring had finally arrived … even though there was still two feet of snow on the ground. We remember the thrill of waking to find Easter baskets on the kitchen table and later, the fun we had with our kids on Easter morning with scavenger hunts for eggs and treats.

So what's on our agenda for the day? We've only been back a few days and we're still learning our way around. Our fridge is not working (GRRRR!), so no shopping in advance for Easter dinner fixin's. But we've seen lots of old friends here and perhaps it'll be a good day for a cruiser get-together … a day for sharing adventures and tall tales and cold beer and just maybe … chocolate bunnies.

Taking a Leap - How to use an extra day

Every fourth year or so we pick up an extra day in our calendar and luckily 2016 is one of those years. Leap Day, February 29th, is a welcome addition to our schedule. We need some extra time to get our lives in order before we head back home in a couple weeks to Nine of Cups in Trinidad.

So how come we get all this extra time? According to Rich Exner at cleveland.com, it's a bit more complicated than I thought. “Most everyone knows that leap year is a calendar-balancing act, so our calendars don't get out of whack over time. A year, based on the Earth's orbit, lasts 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds. Put another way, that's 365.2422 days long. A normal calendar year is 365 days. Over four years, that would add up to 1,460 days. But, based on the Earth's orbit, we really have covered nearly 1,461 days. So, Feb. 29 is added in leap years to bring us up to 1,461 calendar days.”

But that's still not exactly precise. “The math-gifted know that four years on the calendar actually last 1,460.9688 days, not 1,461 days. A little difference can add up to a big difference over time. So every 100 years, we don't observe a leap year. There was no leap year in 1800 and no leap year in 1900. What about 2000 ... it was a leap year? Skipping a leap year every 100 years solves much of the problem, but not all of it. So every 400 years, there's another twist. There is a leap day in years ending with 00 if the year is divisible by 400. That made 2000 a leap year and it will be the case again in 2400.

But 2100, 2200 and 2300 will not be leap years. This system will keep us on track for 3,333 years.”

Whew … I was worried.

It was Julius Caesar, by the way, that introduced the first leap every four years. There ended up being too many leap years, so the Romans added an extra month every once in awhile to coincide with the change of the seasons. It stayed that way until 1582 when the Gregorian calendar, the one we use today, was introduced. Some calendars have leap months. The Chinese lunisolar calendar has 13 months every three years. The Ethiopian calendar (yes, there is an Ethiopian calendar) has 13 months

Now that we have the extra day, what are we going to do with it? Aha … I've got that all figured out.

I've scheduled our IRS tax prep that morning, as well as several other irritating little chores while David works on projects at the new house. There's still more moving to be done and stuff to be packed and subsequently unpacked.

Traditionally, if a woman asks a man to marry her on leap day, he must oblige. If not, he must pay a penalty. In some countries, a man who refused would provide the rejected woman with gloves to hide the embarrassment of a missing engagement ring on her finger. Since David obliged me ~30 years ago (actually he asked me...just to set the record straight), I thought I'd turn the tables and invite him out to lunch. MY treat (OUR budget). Since I doubt I'll convince anyone in the family to play leap frog, I thought I'd find a copy of Leap Year to watch in the evening. I know it's a chick flick, but while sipping extra dry champagne on our extra day, David will hardly notice.