It’s strange, how when you drift around as much as I do, random things seem to gain more meaning. Despite the fact that my feet are firmly planted on the flagship – to the point where I can almost start calling my cabin here “home”, since I’m probably going to be here for the foreseeable future , it doesn’t take much for me to be instantly transported back somewhere else.
Pasta mixed with Alfredo sauce, hold the garlic, extra bolognaise? No matter the time of day, if that’s the meal in front of me, I’ll sit down at the table and I look for Hunt and the others. Same with the shipboard pizza, if it’s been made properly. Why? Because when you’re working late on a vista class ship pizza/pasta is all that’s available. Goddess did we ever get tired of pasta…
The shipboard chocolate chip cookies? One taste of those and I’m instantly sneaking down the I-95 with my sister on my very first ship over a year ago, raiding the bakery at 4am. I’ve not done a proper bakery raid since, because I haven’t found someone as entertaining to do one with…
You go first you’re prettier
Am not!
Are too!
To this day I can’t drink Tazo Calm Tea without thinking of Saerwan and all the times we spent on the deck 3 promenade, sneaking 5 minutes of personal time despite the fact that we were both supposed to be working. 5 minutes would turn into ten, would turn into 15…my internet managers knew better than to look for me.
Every time I pick up a basketball on deck 9 I’m back in Israel, listening to the rattle of the hoop in the stillness of the afternoon.
Mamma Mia puts me back in front of the party band.
Sometimes I wonder if I even have room for more memories. Or if my imagination has simply become a scrapbook for all the tastes, smells and sounds of the hundreds of people I’ve come into contact with.
As I’ve said before, we shed the ones that aren’t important…the important ones…the anchor lines…those ones stay…and come back to us, in little things, like the taste of chocolate chip cookies, and the rattle of a basket ball hoop.