Post Cruise Blues

Post Cruise Blues

The melancholy is really starting to kick in now. I'm finding myself sad for no particular reason and life seems all of a sudden so bittersweet. But when I ponder the reason for my melancholy, it's obvious what the problem is.

For example...

When I came home last night after work and went to my bedroom, the bed wasn't crisply made and turned down for the night in a precise 45-degree fold. There wasn't a cute little towel animal happily sitting on the fresh bedding looking at me and there weren't two delicious foil-wrapped chocolates laying next to the animal inviting me to taste them. Instead there was a snoozing wife taking up most of the bed with Mentholatum rubbed all over her nose to help her breath during her head cold.

When I woke up in the morning the room wasn't gently swaying and I knew with an absolute certainty that there wasn't going to be a sunny new country sitting outside my front door waiting for my delighted gaze and beckoning me to stroll its quaint streets, taste its exotic foods and to meet its fascinating people.

I knew without a doubt that a smiling steward wouldn't be greeting me by name when I exited my bedroom and that my breakfast would not be ready for me when I got to the kitchen. I'd have to rustle it up for myself and there would NOT be four dozen choices to pick from.

I also knew that I would be going to work this afternoon instead of perusing a listing of various activities I could sample throughout the entire day that would entertain, enlighten and fascinate me. And probably tickle my funny bone in the process.

The simple truth was that our long-awaited spring cruise was, sadly, over.

(cue the violin music)

From the moment of leaving our front door to returning over a week later there had been 207 hours of vacation with a big capital “V”. And those more-than-eight-days went by like a flash of lightning in a June thunderstorm, like the flash-bang of an aerial salute at the fireworks on the Fourth of July.

It went by so incredibly fast!

I knew while we were experiencing it that I should dig in my heels to slow down the time, I should grab hold of something to extend the experience, to keep it from running by so fast!

And I tried! Honestly!

But time spent on vacation always seems to bypass the laws of physics that it keeps so well during other time periods. Time swoops and dives and laughs and hurtles and zooooooooooooooooms along, careening pell-mell towards the finish line, the last day of vacation, like a speeding bullet hungry for its target. It seemed as if my wife and I only had time to look at each other and to say, “Boy, this is really...” and before the word “great” could be spoken, the week was over and we were back home doing the same-old, same-old.

But when I go back and study the pictures we took, the trip comes back to me, the experiences are remembered and the fun we had is re-experienced. Looking back through the pictures I now have time to digest the trip and to more thoroughly savor the essence of each and every adventure. And I get to do so this time without having to brush sand off my toes, without having to again endure the jellyfish sting in my leg, without all the normal aches and pains of late-middle-aged folks doing too much for too long a period of time. And also without sweat dripping from my face from a hot tropical sun, without the discomfort of an upset belly from too much rich food for too many meals, without the head cold that your wife had at the beginning of the trip and you had at the end. You can now remember the experiences clean and sharp with all the various nuances intact and clear.

I look at the pictures and remember the dusty brown donkeys and cattle in the road on a hot afternoon on an unhurried desert island. I can see the incredibly blue waves dancing in the harbor of another palm-studded Caribbean island and feel their spray against my sunburned face. I can again savor the spicy bite of a smoky hot sauce drizzled on a sizzling conch fritter fresh out of the hot oil. I can vividly recall my wife sitting next to me and sipping a cool frosty drink in a beautiful lounge and how she laughed at a comedian's crude humor. I can again feel in my bones the magnificent white ship that enveloped us and cared for us and carried us to enchanted places on a sparkling blue tropical sea.

And how, in that week, it became our home.

It may be that I'm a romantic and need time and space to totally absorb a place, an event, an experience to make it real, but sometimes the memory of these things is more poignant, more vivid and stronger than the actual experience itself. It sometimes seems that you can be too busy doing something to actually enjoy the doing of it.

There were a few times, however, during the trip when I found myself in the middle of something and felt my mind actually step back and say, “Wow! This is soooooooo cool!” One of those times was when I was standing in a crowd in Miami the night before the cruise listening to a group play wild Cuban salsa music, listening to the attractive female singer belt out the Spanish lyrics in her strong voice and watching the crowd move with the irresistible rhythm. I found my feet tapping of their own accord and my body swaying as the music grabbed me and made me one with the crowd. Another time was standing at Mountaintop on St. Thomas gazing northward toward the Atlantic Ocean, seeing the beauty of Magen's Bay at my feet and the marvelous hilly islands stretching off into the hazy blue distance. I could feel through my feet the long, long history and the rock-ribbed strength of this little green island sitting it its blue, blue sea.

And I recall the last night on-board at the finish of our meal in the opulent Golden Dining Room when the stewards sang the song that I knew was coming from the first moment we stepped on the ship, the song that signified that the cruise was over. They sang the “Leaving on a Fun Ship” song to the tune of “Leaving on a Jet Plane”. We've only experienced it once before, but it drew the same response from us as the first time, an intense sadness that the cruise was over. My wife and I were so choked up we could hardly speak for long minutes after the song faded. We could see tears in each others eyes as the crew voiced the traditional song for us. It reminded us that, for our week on the ship, we were family. All 3,000 of us, along with another thousand crew. Sure, there were 3,000 other folks there the previous week and another 3,000 were waiting to come aboard when we left, but for OUR week, this was OUR ship, OUR Glory, OUR family and it was so very, very sad to say goodbye.

Tradition says that if you get teary and choked up when you hear this song it means you had a good cruise.

Well folks, we had a GREAT cruise.

Now excuse me while I go back and look at some pictures again.

And check some sailing times for our next cruise!