“For my life, my lover, my Lady is the sea”
~ The Looking Glass ‘Brandy’
I am often quick to correct people who gush about how I have such a glamourous life; quick to shut down people who assume that the job is all sunshine and roses. And my corrections are the truth: most of the time, the job is just a job, like any other. Nine to five (sometimes longer) you get up, you go to work, you come home, you fall into bed…
The seas are rough at the end of the Alaska season, earlier tonight we took the turn into calmer waters so hard that you could hear silverware breaking all over the ship and my television took a header onto the floor (nothing broken thankfully). Things you just don’t have to worry about in a normal non-ship existence. Things that sometimes just make you long for a floor that doesn’t well…move.
But then sometimes, just sometimes…there are nights like tonight.
When I am sitting in the main show lounge among friends watching friends, as the resident casts puts on its crew-only performance of the cheesiest silliest show in their repertoire (“this ‘ere’s the Roadhouse”), complete with changed (and mostly made up dialogue), audience interaction and stagehands who decided to make themselves a hilarious part of the show…
Wait, does he always sing this to the moose?
I’m not actually sure…
Drinking corona out of the bottle and laughing until my ribs hurt and my hands stung from clapping too hard.
Nights like this I realize just how lucky I am, how much of a community we really are…
And that I wouldn’t trade this life for the world.
G’night Neverland.