We are home. Our ship docked at Pier 90 on Manhattan’s west side yesterday morning, and suddenly our cruise, so anticipated in the last few months, became history, folded into memory along with everything else, so absolutely Over.
We had a wonderful time, and I wrote a good deal while we were on the ship (it is hard for me to have a wonderful time, extended, without writing working its way in). But I did not log on to post anything, because thirty minutes online would cost us $25, and we preferred to spend our money on Other Things. So my plan is to post things little by little over the next few days, and so record it for posterity, and let you know what it was like.
The ship became home almost immediately, not so much because it was familiar as that it was our only option. We were together, after all, and what more do we need? But the ship remained, in fact, a novelty: expansive luxury heretofore unknown in my experience. We had a snug little room that was cleaned and tended to twice a day, a dining room in which servers helped me to my chair and unfolded my napkin for me. We had several options for swimming pools, more options for jacuzzis, and no end of crew and staff whisking away my dishes and preparing my next meal. There were over 3000 of us on board; the ship had eleven decks, two huge restaurants, several auditoriums, lounges, a casino, a couple of bars, and a water slide. Sometimes I forgot we were on a ship; sometimes I thought we had relocated to a resort in Arizona, except for all the water.
And then I was reminded: we’d be walking down the hallway to our room, or rounding a bend in the staircase on our way to the Lido deck and suddenly the ship would heave just a bit, adjusting her hull to a change in the Atlantic’s shifting surface. And now the floor, where we fully intended to place a foot only a moment before, had relocated centimeters or inches away. This taught us what is meant by the term “sea legs,” the ability to move with some kind of predictable regularity and even grace on a surface that moves without warning.
We were surprised on our shore excursions to imagine the ship’s continued movement beneath us. Standing in a shop, a restaurant, even a sidewalk, we caught outselves making adjustments in our stance to movements that didn’t exist.
But all of that is over now. We docked and came down the gangway to a joyous reunion with our children and my parents, who kept the children for the week. We visited with them for awhile there, then proceeded uptown for a visit to St. John the Divine, a gothic cathedral in Manhattan. Afterward we took the children to the top of the Empire State Building, then ate some hotdogs at the corner of 5th and 34th. The long drive home yesterday was relatively painless; we got in at about 10:00.
Today it has been about unpacking and becoming familiar again with the mundane duties of the housewife. We went to church this morning and to Emmaus Way this evening; Bill watched the Steelers trounce the Titans this afternoon while I read for class. Everything familiar, everything as we left it. We are home.
Nonetheless, I have felt it more than once today: the imagined shifting of the floor, the gentle roll of the ship underneath my feet. I catch myself adjusting my weight, leaning slightly against the sway. It may take some time after all, I guess, to find my land legs.
