Ever Westward – (Transatlantic, 04/21/2011)

Five more days left.

Five more sessions of onboard games, one more Grand Dollar Redemption, 20 more bingo games, one more formal night, one more ball, five more time-changes, one more crew party.

120 more hours.

7200 minutes.

Doesn’t matter how you slice it, it’s not much time. For all intents and purposes, the World Cruise is basically over. Passports are being handed back to the guests in a slow but steady trickle, and the few remaining sea-days, while crammed full of as much activity as we can muster, remain the wrap up of what really has been a whirlwind 110 days. For me of course, it’s not even been that long, as I joined the crew of this particular ship a month behind everyone else. It seems like I only just got to know everyone’s names and now they’re all leaving.

I’ll be staying on for another few weeks after the huge turn around that will come when we finish this crossing, but everyone else? Three quarters of them will be leaving.

This is where it becomes very obvious why I call myself a gypsy. Just like a chorus girl, travelling from show to show, going where the work takes her, where the contracts open up, except we go from ship to ship. Paths cross and interchange, lives twine and untangle, we meet we part, we move on.

The book returns are pouring in, our average return rate in these last few days will feel like it’s hundreds per hour, but actually, at last check of the database, there are only a few hundred volumes (400 to be precise) left to be returned. The paperback exchange is, of course, overflowing, as everyone realizes that all these blocks of paper they brought with them are pointless weight in their suitcases now.

We’re already starting to pull the travel guides for the next cruise, so that they can stored in the back room and brought out as needed. You can’t leave relevant travel guides on the open shelves; they go missing too quickly, so we keep them locked up behind the desk.

Little signs are everywhere that we’re wrapping up. The onboard salon is running out of hair-colorant (which nixes the idea I had of getting my hair done before I arrived in Fort Lauderdale), the coffee shop is using up the last of their labeled cups. Little things. Things we’re geared to notice and compensate for that the passengers don’t pay attention to, except occasionally to notice that something hasn’t been done. The usual.

3 nights from now is the gala Black & Gold Farewell Ball, which will doubtlessly have its own write up when the time comes, the day after that we will all tumble into the Showroom for the L.I.A.L farewell debark, and that’s it, we’re done.

Until the next time.

Somehow I am once again reminded of A Chorus Line – when asked why the show was originally scripted to have no bows, just an ever-running kick line as the curtain went down, the director responded “because that’s life, no bows, no applause…that’s a dancer’s life, a gypsy’s life…”