Carrying Grandma — “The stretcher wouldn’t fit in the bedroom, so somebody had to carry her out. My mother-in-law asked me.”
Tag: family
Ready To Go Home
Last full day at sea. Tomorrow we're in port, then an airport, then home. And I have to admit something I've never once been able to say at the end of one of these. I'm ready to go. Every other cruise I've taken has ended with me dragging my feet up the gangway. The last … Continue reading Ready To Go Home
A Hundred Feet
Standing off the back of a ship at night in the middle of the ocean is the strangest feeling I know. The deck lights throw a haze that hangs out over the water, a kind of halo, and inside it you can see about a hundred feet of wake — white foam churned up and … Continue reading A Hundred Feet
Passenger
I love watching people, and a ship is about the best place I've found to do it. Everybody converges. Nationalities I couldn't place, accents I can't identify, families three generations deep at one table. Old people moving slow and full of life. Kids running where they shouldn't. Somebody loud at the bar who wants the … Continue reading Passenger
Three Hundred Dollars
The summer after my freshman year I called my grandmother from a pay phone and asked her for three hundred dollars. I was already on the mission trip when I made the call. The arrangement had been seven or eight hundred for the summer, some of it up front — except none of it came … Continue reading Three Hundred Dollars
