Our beginning...

For every story there is a beginning. Ours began a while back, and holds in its folds many wonderful, tasteful, mundane and difficult moments. The beginning of this blog, however, finds us in Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia, expecting the newest member of our family: Irini. She is growing ever so quickly now, so that movement has become difficult for Natalia. We can visualize little Irini moving about her little warm cove as she re-adjusts and pushes the walls of the placenta to find some extra space. From the outside we smile as we see Natalia's belly moving about, we chat about what she might be up to, and talk about her future career as a soccer player or karate black belt. Steadily and subtly our thinking turns from the present - our careers, our pay, our life - to the future. We chat not about dreams, but about possibilities. What will she look like? When will we meet her? Will she have blue eyes or brown eyes? Will she be a night owl or a solid sleeper? It's fun to think about possibilities. In the meantime we enjoy our "last" this and that on our own as we prepare for her arrival. We have only a few weeks now, and our new journey to Ithaka is drawing near.... where will it lead? Does it matter? It's the journey itself that matters most. We marvel in the possibilities and share a smile and a kiss.

Our Ithaka

Ithaka, a poem oft-paraphrased and quoted in Greece, is over 100 years old now. It's language brings us back not just one century, but over 1,000 years, to the Homeric writings of the Odyssey. The poem, though, is of timeless essense relating to life and expectations, to goals and hopes, to the distinction between where one thinks he/she is going and to how, in the end it is the journey that perhaps matters more than the destination.

"Our Ithaka" is simply our story of our travels, our lives, and our adventures. We hope that this is the first of many such postings, some long, some shorter. It will be of this and that, of little things or big. For what it's worth, here is the beginning of our journey to Our Ithaka...

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind- as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

By C.P. Cavafy