WHERE
IS EVERYBODY?
That was my first thought this
morning. Even as I emerged from the
bedroom, half-drugged from a long sleep, I had this feeling, made worse as I
looked down our silent, back-bedroom hall.
“Where are they now? How can I make
it through the day—knowing they won’t be waiting for me up in the World
Cafe? Starboard Side, of course.” That
Rob and I will have breakfast without them—and nearly as bad, Whatever we eat,
I will have to make most of it. Darn.
“Yeah, it’s a shame,” said Rob. “The
place does seem kind of empty, doesn’t it?”
And then, “When are you going to start our egg and toast, Babe?” Which brought me up short, along with yesterday’s
early evening statement, “My suitcase is empty.”
Well, unlike prior trips, mine wasn’t.
And thus came the
Day-After-The-Trip. A cruise. But no ordinary trip, you see, because there
were twelve of us aboard the Viking Sea, cruising the distant Caribbean.
Eight of whom were grandchildren and their various spice . . . (what else works
as the plural of “spouse?”)
What to do except start calling their
various households—bent on telling them how much I missed them. Nine a.m., should be safe enough. Well, it certainly was. Turns out they’d all
been texting each other since four this morning. “Can’t believe I’m doing laundry at 4:30 a.m.
” “Went to the grocery store—I was the
only one there.” “The car wash was
empty.” “Too bad you don’t text,
Grandma,” said Christy. “We had quite the chain going.” As she read me their comments, I couldn’t
have agreed more. As a texter, I’m the world’s slowest, and even worse, my
quietly-beeping phone is never where I am, so it’s no use being on anyone’s
chain.
As to the trip, it had dozens of great
moments: all of us at dinner together in a small, twelve-person private dining
room, joined by the ship’s four-stripe, chief Engineer from Bulgaria, put
together because Zhanina, Dane’s fiancé, is also from Bulgaria. Thanks to his heavy accent, Rob and I
couldn’t understand a word he said, but he kept everyone else laughing.
The moments when we got to know various
spice a lot better. There’s Matt, the computer whiz who, the day before the
trip, finished a project for Oracle. I
knew Matt mostly as the guy who performed miracles whizzing his distant mouse
across my rebelling computer screen—but never as the quiet listener who reveled
in the ship’s classical violin duo performances. Rob and I spent hours with
Kelly and Matt in after-dinner hours of rapt, pleasurable silence. We’ve agreed he’ll now attend some of the local
classical music events (as members of a music support group), that take place
in homes blocks from ours.
Then there was Mike, whose vacation
hair across the breakfast table at first made me yearn for a comb. But
eventually I came to appreciate the hair—and all because of the smart, funny, intense
guy who was under it. We spent hours with Mike in lively conversation.
Then Dan, who’s always been noteworthy
as unusually kind—but not as our gang’s resident best-dresser, second only to Tracy’s Paul—who himself is notable, with Rob
and me, as the family’s clothes horse and “man we can’t do without.”
Throughout the trip there were
grandkids and spice who jumped up to bring Rob and me various servings from the
cafeteria—and at other times to help us with luggage or merely our own
faltering feet . . . on and off tour buses, in and out of taxis, or simply on
and off the ship itself. However, I must
add there was no help possible for the dozens of trips the two of us made the
length of the ship—from our stateroom in the bow to the dining rooms in the
stern. We kept repeating the same mantra: “God, this hall is damn well endless.
Down there at the end, I can’t even see our room. I can hardly believe
it.” And then, “I’m glad this walk is so
good for us.”
Though Rob, as always, made instant
friends with all the waiters, discussing their countries of origin and learning
to say ‘thank you’ in their language. . . because of our larger crowd we made no
friends, beyond passing Hellos, with any of the other guests. However, there
was one such moment that stands out: Near the end of the trip a steel band
performed out near the pool deck. Thanks to the music’s lively beat (and no
doubt helped by the rum drinks). . . our family, sitting as a unified group,
kept jumping up to dance.
Our daughter, Tracy, quickly helped
form a Congo
group which rounded the deck. Then, one by one, the grandkids forced Rob and me
to our feet. Bob did a “cane dance,”
jumping about as he twirled his cane, while two young males took each of my
arms and forced me to dance with them.
Several times. Each occasion I
kept going until I ran out of breath. Those moments were both fun and
exhausting—understandable to anyone in his or her ninth decade.
Later that day Mike was stopped by a
spectator who’d been leaning over a balcony, observing. The woman said to
Mike: “I was watching your family. What a bunch. They made me cry.” I, for one, had never heard a more touching
comment.
