Congenial-speak #5

Musing on the subtext of my political memoir Ten Years and Change: A DFL Boyhood in Minnesota I meandered my mind to discover the following story in its own right:

I began my following on a ship in its slip. We moored tenuously to a pier in Ft. Lauderdale, moments before embanking into the Gulf. We anticipated the currents that would nurture us into the turquoise waters of the Caribbean. Cruise folks itched fingers, flicking last cigarettes in closely monitored ash bins, fidgeting nervously and eating everything in sight, waiting anxiously for the casinos to open when we reached international bounds. Curvy European women in top naval positions walk astutely down decks in their tight white uniforms. Yellow and black epithets rise and fall in the hazy carbonized February Floridian sun. In the dims of the halls inside the ship walk the room stewards, pushing carts, pulling luggage, smiling at menial level jobs. They were loose satin pastels and look ready to jump to another trade at a different hour. There are women too, but many men doing housekeeping work. They hustled in and out of staterooms with tiny pads to be checked. Clean from the last cruise that expired less than four hours ago. People debark, dolefully walk down the gang plank to return to the real world by 2PM at the absolute latest. The next eager bunch, busting to leave the U.S. for a week, is allowed to embark as early as 4PM.

The readiness is watched, the number of lifeboats is noted, the call and chaos of the mandatory muster drill is awaited, and I, like a writer, one who wants to live to write about it, observes the efficiency of the drill. I note people's reaction, how they react to the preferential treatment accorded to those many pushing walkers or being pushed in wheelchairs. I am fascinated by the stories that unfold before me before the lines on cleats are even detached. They are the glimpses into family dynamics, how the young kids are making friends with the “kids club” for the week and mom and dad have peace of mind on two fronts. That their child is in good hands and that they are not a constant fount of entertainment for 7 days. I see grandma taken on the ship, women whose legs are swelled like hams and as red as beets. They have the veins of a forest of leaves and ride high in the wheelchair. Everyone, even the pre-cruise pie-eyed give her room in the elevator. I think of when I was 5 and my grandparents took my mom, sis and I on a Caribbean cruise. I was curious and remember hating the club-like nursery set aside for kids. I want to remember sis and I ditched it, left the bitchy lady with blood on her hands. She had to tell her superior two “lords-of-the-fly” from Minnesota flew the coop. That was in 1969.

In 2016 kids helped, everyone pitched in to move heavy-set people. Except for a few retirees set in their way, blowing it all before they die, half expecting the cruise mentality as far as classes to be more like that 1969 cruise, people shook the captain's hand as they held their heart at the top of the gang-way. They took one last look at the fork-ifted activity going on below, exhaled Ft. Lauderdae's congested spring-broken air, and crossed the ship's threshold into a world of opulence. At least we thought so. It was a word where little, if anything, was ever asked of you. It was a world that tears down whatever inhibitions not previously gated. Alcohol and the thought of anonymity unlocks doors. A cruise brings out what everyone wants to be but was afraid to be. I smiled at the prospects for the week. Trailing through a spotless, shinning marble floor, I wait in the carpeted area of the elevator. My wife and I ascend, chat with some good ole' folks from Texas and arrive at our floor. We note landmarks, pictures to clues us which way to turn when we begin drinking. Is our room on the starboard or leeward side of the vessel. I think nautical for the first few days.