It was raining for our last call in the port city for Rome. And I mean really raining; torrential haphazard downpour that made it almost impossible to even see through the ship windows. When I dashed off the ship to meet Amras for lunch it wasn’t so bad, but by the time I got off the shuttle it had once again become thick enough that it was a challenge to see your hand in front of your face!
Definitely getting to be the end of the season out here!
Since the only coat I own is a full winter coat with a fur collar (which is great for Canada, but for the warm rains of the med? No so much) – I simply resigned myself to being soaked for much of the day. I did make the concession of buying a cheap umbrella from one of the street vendors who were hawking them right at the doors to the shuttle – which will likely break the second I attempt to use it again, but that’s okay, it only had to last the day.
As it turned out, it really only had to last a few hours, since just after noon found us ensconced at an inside table overlooking the harbor watching the sun fight valiantly to break through the seemingly perpetual cloud cover. Eventually the sunshine won the battle and the we were able to enjoy what was probably our last proper Italian meal watching the world (and ourselves) dry off under a bright blue sky. That said, we were both in a pensive kind of mood, both of us have big stuff going on in our lives right now and these moments of frivolity are kind of few and far between sometimes, but there’s also nothing wrong with silence once in a while. Particularly when it’s the kind of silence that comes between people who feel safe being silent with each other. My big brother and I are kind of past the point where we feel the need to babble just to fill the quiet. Sometimes we need quiet.
A lot of it is because the ship is prepping for something of course, at one point during our semi-rambling conversation Amras asked me,
Have you done the crossing going this direction?
Hun, I’ve done the crossing backwards, forwards, upside down and sideways…I could quite possibly do it on my head.
Of course you have…
It being the end of season, the Crossing is looming ahead of all of us like a giant raincloud itself. Most of us are simply putting it out of our minds. Amras and I have a standing rule that we don’t even discuss work unless the ship is in sight, preferring to focus instead on which flavor of Gelato is better and which short story plotline I should work on next – but it is, never the less, still there. Something like five more ports to go before we take to the open ocean for a week.
But for now? Well, I still have a few more rock star days in Italy…and this is a good t