Another World Cruise gone very nearly gone. It’s hard to believe that we started this journey together four months ago, when it seems like four days. Well, most of the time it seems like four days, there are other times when it seems like four years.
In just over a month the A-Team will scatter to the winds and go our separate ways for the summer season. Some of us will go to Alaska, in attempt to put some more change in the piggybank in preparation for the next dry spell, some will be fortunate enough to be past that stage and so go home for a long stretch of the summer. Some aren’t leaving at all, but are staying on either as crew or as friends on board to other crew members.
Some of us will never come back; there are always one or two that follow through on the threat of “that’s it! I’m never putting myself through this again”.
Come September we will all troupe up the gangway again – most of us anyway – and start the whole process over again. China, Japan, Korea, Australia, Thailand, Africa, they will all lay out before us like some marvelous quilted blanket waiting to be explored. And we will forget for a while, how tired it makes us, and how lonely, and how strained we can sometimes get, and everything will be bright and sparkling and new again.
But right now, Goddess to we ever need the break. Time to process. Time to recharge. We’re starting to wear, on ourselves, on each other, on our shore-side friends who have to listen to us.
I feel like I need a year to recover from this contract.
I’ll have three weeks.
Jury’s out on whether or not that’s going to be enough, but that light at the end of the tunnel? I don’t think it’s an oncoming train…
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is sunshine.