Just As Long As We Have We – Victoria, BC – 12/25/2019]

Posted on December 26, 2019 by GypsyShaughnessy

It came without ribbons
It came without tags
It came without packages, boxes or bags

Welcome Christmas while we stand
heart to heart
And hand in hand
Christmas Day will always be
Just as long as we have we…

And in the end, matters of twos and threes and fours settle out, and my favourite day of the year takes it’s place as one of the kindest – although perhaps one of the most unusual – Christmases I’ve had so far. As the day winds to a sleepy close, as dessert plates are cleared and gift wrap carefully folded and set aside for – perhaps – use next year. As the crisp cold air outside turns dark and the stars light Santa’s way home for another holiday…I am reminded once again of what’s really important.

There’s an old cliché that says that Christmas is not about what’s under the tree, it’s about who’s around it. I am reminded this year of exactly how true that is. It’s never been about what we get, it’s about what we give. Perhaps that’s why I like Christmas so much…it reminds me that there is hope in the world. There is still a capacity for human beings to be kind, to reach out to one another with an outstretched hand of understanding rather than a clenched fist of defiance. There is still the possibility that things will work out. Christmas isn’t about the things you can feel, or touch or even see…Christmas is about…the intangibles.

My favourite memories of this Christmas? Have nothing to do with what I did or did not unwrap. My favourite memories of this Christmas are the feeling of Amras’ hand in mind when we walked through the chill afternoon air along the golf course and picked up an errant golf ball as a gift for the family cat. The look on my mother’s face when I brought her up a piece of garlic sausage on a cracker (“Christmas!!!”), the warmth of a fireplace on my face and the giggling about the highly predictable nature of Hallmark Christmas movies (“ooooh but is he wearing plaid!?”). The smell of the tree lot in the rain as we picked out our very first Christmas tree. My mum asking me for my sugar cookie recipe (I still say that’s proof that I have succeeded as an adult). Tracking Santa across the United States. Watching my father welcome another member into a very small and serious tradition that means such a very great deal to all of us.

Christmas isn’t about what you get. Christmas is about what you give. And in learning that you will receive more than you ever thought possible.

Some transitions are hard. Some are easy. Some are just awkward. But there is a breathtaking beauty waiting for you if you are patient and accepting of the change…

I know that a great many of you are away from your loved ones tonight. I’ve been there, I know how that feels. So I just want to take this moment to remind you: Christmas is something you carry with you. So is family. So are a great many things that are really really important and all too easy to forget. Those things can’t be packaged, or bought, but they also can’t be lost. At least not so much so that they can’t be found again.

So wherever you are, whoever you’re with. I wish you, and yours the most magical of yuletides.

And on that note, I whisper some words to the close and holy darkness…and I sleep.

Goodnight neverland.

 

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Changing and Rearranging – Victoria, BC – [12/23/2019]

Posted on December 23, 2019 by GypsyShaughnessy

My world is changing and rearranging
Does that mean Christmas changes too?
~ How the Grinch Stole Christmas

I am a big big Christmas person. I always have been. Christmas, to me, is not about the gifts (though who doesn’t like getting presents), it’s about…everything else. The tree, the lights, the smell of baking cookies…it’s about, family, and people, and…reminding yourself that – even when things are at their most tragically complicated -there is still good in the world.

This Christmas though…this Christmas is…well, I’ve had a bit of a harder time keeping sight of that.

For all the joy this year has brought me, there has been a lot of emotional upheaval as well. My family is close; it’s always been just the three of us. Christmas? Christmas has always been even more just the three of us than any other time of year. 35 years worth of traditions and Christmas records and…it’s always been this way. It’s always always been this way. Even when I was away on ships, it was still…always this way.

And then I got married, and suddenly “it’s always been this way”…wasn’t.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled to be married!! Despite the hiccups brought about by circumstances out of our control (::ahem:: I’m lookin’ at you red tape and legalities!), we are really happy and life is settling slowly into place. We are adjusting to each other’s quirks and oddities and learning new things about each other every day. We’re facing our challenges head on and embracing our triumphs as a unit, and that’s fantastic.

We have an adorable tree and scented candles and I have my very own Christmas Eve scroll. This afternoon I sat and sifted through my Gran’s recipe book in search of the family sugar cookie recipe (which I couldn’t find so I had to cheat with a recipe from online). We are learning each other’s traditions and figuring out how to build and blend our own and…that’s how it’s supposed to be.

But getting married means that …now we are two. And now …we are four. Where there has always been three, there are now two separate – but intricately connected – pairs. And as it turns out ,building our own traditions is both amazing and a little bit intimidating. Where do you start? What do you keep? What do you move on from? How do I keep my heart from breaking just a little when everything does change? How do I find the balance between taking joy in what is and feeling sorrow for what has been (potentially) left behind?

It’s not necessarily a bad thing; and in reality it’s just a new adventure. It’s just proving a little more difficult than any of us involved expected.

But the important thing is that I’m home. That we are all home. All the people I care about are in one place, and while things aren’t the way they have always been, they are changing into something that’s equally as beautiful.

And this afternoon, when I was standing in the kitchen with flour on my apron and my hands sticky with cookie dough, and the King’s Singers Christmas album playing…I finally got just the glimmer, the reassurance that yes, things change, but that doesn’t mean they go away.

And under it all, at the heart of it, I am still just sitting here…looking at the Christmas lights…and enjoying my oranges.

Because it will come, one way or another, without packages, boxes or bags….

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Always A Band – Victoria, BC – [12/22/2019]

Posted on December 22, 2019 by GypsyShaughnessy

“That’s why I wanted you in the band, so you’d stop mopin’ around and feelin’ sorry for yourself”

“What band?”

“I always think there’s a band, kid”
~ The Music Man

As some of you know few years ago my father’s dance orchestra folded. I wasn’t there when it happened, I don’t know the ins and outs of why it happened. I know that it wasn’t anticipated, and I know that my family was…broken up…about it. That’s putting it mildly. Since I was just over the age of 10 the band a constant presence in my life…they were not just a ‘hobby band’, they were our extended family. This was not just something that my father did on weekends, this was a crucial living part of who we were.

When the band folded, we lost a lot of that. There are a few that stayed around (Amras and I were really lucky to have three of them play our wedding), but most of them just…drifted away. There were a lot of burned bridges over that situation.

I haven’t given it a great deal of thought in the four years since it happened. Some things sting too much to think about too often. But then something sometimes happens to bring everything back.

This afternoon my folks took Amras and I to the local Jazz club (the oldest jazz club in Canada), to see an old friend of my Dad’s that was playing there. Now, I haven’t seen Clark in almost a decade for one thing, I was shocked even remembered me; but I haven’t heard this particular group (a quartet that often flexes to a quintet or shrinks to a trio that’s super well known in the trad-jazz circuits), since before my Dad’s band splintered; I was not entirely prepared for the amount of flashbacks that ended up being involved. There is a lot of cross over between the two sets of charts – different arrangements of course – but still the same songs, some of which were borrowed directly from the Broadcaster’s chart book.

There were times this afternoon when my Mum and I were crying, and had you pressed us to explain why, we probably wouldn’t have been able to.

The truth of it is? I miss my family. I grew up with eleven or so aunts and uncles, who were at every holiday, every occasion…they were just…always there. And then, suddenly, they…weren’t. Almost eleven people who just disappeared out of my life without a word, and I didn’t get to say goodbye.

And all of that is somehow tied up in novelty dance tunes and cold bar food in a place with brick walls and a too small dance floor that I thought…I would never set foot in again.

Sometimes memory lane catches you on a sideswipe…

Posted in Below the waterline, Sadie, Vacations/Shore-Side | 1 Comment

Whirlwind West Coast – Seattle, Washington – [02/18-20/2019]

Posted on December 20, 2019 by GypsyShaughnessy

What do you do when you are faced with having to do something that is absolutely necessary, and potentially…really kind of a pain? You find some way to make it fun.

You may have picked up that there is a lot of red tape involved in the fact that Amras is from the states and he’s in the process of moving to Canada. Immigration is…not the most fun process. It’s not necessarily complicated but not fun. The last thing we had to do in this whole process was two medical exams…which had to be done on the American side of the border. There’s only one option for that – and that’s Seattle.

Now, in the winter, the Clipper ferry only runs twice a day – so no matter what you do, if you want to go to Seattle in December, you’re staying overnight.

Thankfully, we were able to book both appointments in the early morning/late afternoon. And that left most of the afternoon to do what we wanted (though granted, it was a business trip, so we were still on a schedule). Well, Amras and I are old hands and fitting in a lot into a few hours! First on the list? Jimmi Hendrix’s footprints on the walk of fame outside of Nordstrom’s. Originally we really wanted to do a lot more Hendrix stops, but they’re far flung and the weather was not exactly in our favour. So instead, it was a lot window of shopping (okay, for me the giant bookstore ended up being a little bit more than window shopping), and a wet evening stroll through Pike Place Market. There is something about Pike Place Market that always feels…even more out of town.

Amras has a gift for finding the perfect resteraunt, I have no idea how he does it, he just does. All he does is ask me what kind of food I want, and then a few hours later we are sitting somewhere…perfect. This time it was Italian (okay, whenever I get to choose the menu it’s always Italian…it’s a weakness); and the place he found? The tables were old library tables! And the food was amazing. It was still pouring rain out, but that only made the whole thing more cozy. Especially since for the first little while we were the only ones there.

Then there was the Christmas gift from my parents: tickets to Mrs Doubtfire : The Musical. I know, it’s an odd thing to make a full-blown show of. But it worked. Moments of tears, moments of hilarity, moments of “ouch, I can kind of relate to that”…and the joy of introducing Amras to the theatre where I saw my very very first life show a very long time ago (much longer ago than I care to admit). Best. Christmas. Gift. Ever.

There was just one small hitch…when we had headed to the theatre it had been raining but not too hard. When we left the theatre? Full blown west coast deluge. It was like something out of a movie, you almost couldn’t see your hand in front of your face! Sometimes I forget just how much it rains on the west coast in December! Welcome to a west coast Christmas!

So, in the end, all the business got done (with great success), and we got a whirlwind vacation which I think we needed a little bit more than we realized…

Not a bad way to spend a few days…

 

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Natural Church – Curacao – [12/05/2019]

Posted on December 5, 2019 by GypsyShaughnessy

I’ve been in the air, I’ve been on the sea – but very very seldom have I really been underground.

This morning saw me getting up very early to board a bus to the Hato Caves here in Curacao. To be honest, I didn’t even know that the caves existed until I saw them on the tour descriptions; and it has been quite some time since I even signed up for a tour.

49 stone steps took us up to the entrance (with care to avoid the apparently poisonous trees and the very very large cacti), and from there we stepped into the humid semi-darkness of the vast underground expanse.

The first few caverns of the cave network have ceilings that are stained black with smoke; the remains of fires lit by runaway slaves who hid in these caves. But when you get further in, those unnatural marks disappear, and you can see only the limestone…

Caves are nature’s cathedrals. The columns and twisted fantasy forms that surrounded us took thousands upon thousands of slow years to form – drip by tiny tiny drip. Each drip carrying just the tiniest bit of lime. The caves are now well, well above sea level – not even anywhere near the coast – but you can still almost hear the water rushing in and out somehow, the ghost of waves long long gone. What water there is is rainwater, and it is so perfectly clear and still that it feels like you could step into the reflection and fall through to a different world, like Alice falling into the looking glass.

There’s no photography in most of the caves, but a photograph wouldn’t do a very good job of capturing what it felt like. I expected to be a little bit nervous – I don’t do that well with small spaces and I was a little leery of all that earth surrounding me (I am, after all, very much a water girl); but I wasn’t. There was just an odd kind of tranquility. A sense of smallness in the universe that has the odd affect of being calming rather than frightening.

I was escorting a tour of a full bus of guests, so there wasn’t a great deal of time to myself, except near the end; nearly the whole group when down in to the “fantasy room”(which is a dead end near the end of the cave network), leaving me alone (except for AJ), in the only cavern in the network that allows in natural light. For just a few minutes, I was able to sit down on the ground and just take in the silence. What this place must be like when there aren’t people traipsing around in it, what it must have been like for centuries before any human even set foot inside.

Walls can’t talk, but I wish they could. Or that people could become a little bit better at hearing what whispers through the silence.

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Repair Work – Aruba – [12/04/2019]

Posted on December 4, 2019 by GypsyShaughnessy

If there is one thing that is so often difficult out here on the waves, it’s the fact that – and I’ve said it before – we truly are cogs in the machine. Much as I love the job (and I do) there is the same underlying current that I imagine comes when one is a worker bee at any big company: if you can stand, you can work.

That can be difficult sometimes. The smiles wear thin and the clockwork winds too tight; and once in a while, all our carefully polished cogs and gears fly all apart and we have to scramble to pick them up and put them back into place before anyone notices any dents.

It’s no big secret that there’s some fairly major things going on in my off-page life right now. Some of it I’m chatty about, most of it I’m not. Some of it is good, and some of it is bad. All of it has led to me being a little bit on the frail side. But hey, you focus on the good and you keep going right?

Until one day you kind of wake up and find that you sort of…can’t; and that’s a rough place to be out here.

Until you realize that you are lucky enough to have one of the best managers in the world, well two, because it was both my on-site manager and my shore-side manager (my “uber boss”) who made this happen.

Manger walked up to me while I was getting coffee yesterday, looked me up, looked me down…and said

How are you doing?

Honestly….?

And she, immediately, no questions asked, no prompting from me – arranged for me to have the day off today. A decision that – as it turned out – was fully backed up by my handler in Head Office. I taught only one short class, and wouldn’t have even had to do that if I had not insisted that I needed something to do. They granted me a mental health day…something that is practically unheard of in this environment,

And even though it wasn’t all that different from any other port day (my classes are light on port days to begin with), it made ever so much more difference than a normal day…because it highlighted something really really important..

Sometimes, even out here where we are all sometimes thought of as so many clockwork dolls…there are still people who care, there are people who see.

And that…that just makes everything so much better.

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Flashbacks – Fort Lauderdale – [12/01/2019]

Posted on December 1, 2019 by GypsyShaughnessy

Many of you are off-page aware of the many reasons that I left my job as a shipboard librarian. And it wasn’t just because the position ultimately ended up being phased out. I was angling to leave long before they sent out the papers stating that we weren’t going to have a choice.

The primary reason was the shift to becoming less librarian and more internet manager. Y’see the shipboard internet is not an easy beast to deal with. It’s slow, it’s cumbersome and it generates a great deal of frustration and anger for all involved. Granted, it’s far far better than having no internet at all. But getting people to listen to that? The amount of abuse that the librarians took was painful. Those are not good memories. Being tasked with dealing with the those queries on more than a casual basis (which is expected of all crew members, if someone needs your help you are supposed to give it if possible after all), throws me right back into days when I would come home exhausted and, often as not, in tears. Or too exhausted to even be in tears.

I thought I had left all of that behind when I moved to my current position. We were specifically told that beyond general assistance, the internet wasn’t our job.

Then, this week, they rolled out an initiative that enlisted people from all departments to help with the front office for a few hours on embark day. No problem, I thought, helping people with where to go for dinner reservations, how to phone their rooms, which end of the ship is which, while at the same time promoting classes? Sounds easy enough.

Then I went to the main office to get the briefing on what my duties were going to be specifically, and the gist of the conversation went as follows:

So we’re going to set up the internet inquiry desk over there on the other side of the lobby

Wait, so I’m just going to be manning an internet set up desk?

Yes. Basically.

Oh god…

So here’s the deal, I want to help guest relations. I really do, they work super hard and embark day is the worst for them and the lightest for me. I have no problem with that, none whatsoever. But please, please anything but this…

Right, where did I leave my power-up playlist…

I got this…I’m sure I’ve got this…

Don’t I?

 

I got this….I got this…

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Walled In – Panama Canal – [11/26/2019]

Posted on November 26, 2019 by GypsyShaughnessy

This morning when I woke up there was a wall about 6 inches from my window.

This is obviously a rather unusual experience! Except if you’ve been in a lock before.

I’ve been through the Panama Canal, at this point, more times that I can really remember. That’s not bragging, or name dropping, it’s simply one of those weird facts that goes with the job. Transiting the Canal is breathtaking the first time you go through it, but it does sometimes lose it’s luster after a while. A colleague of mine back in the days of the library once said

It doesn’t matter that it’s hot and dusty and there’s nothing ot really see, they still all go out there and stare for hours at that big ugly ditch.

That’s a little harsh, as the Canal is really beautiful in places, but it does kind of encompass the “sameness” of the environment.

This is the first time though that I’ve had a cabin that has an outside view (I …might have mentioned that), and because portholes are the lowest level of window on the ship, when we go through a lock, my window ends up way below the ground. It’s an eerie feeling, being able to see and feel the ship lowering with nothing but these massive pitted stone walls visible. Occasionally you can even hear the grinding squeak as the hull brushes against the barriers. And it’s also dark, not really dark, but an odd grey light as if the sun is leaking in around a curtain even though the curtains are open.

Then there is a small, slow, nearly unnoticeable change in direction, and you can feel the ship moving upwards instead. Slowly, ever so slowly, the light comes back and the world becomes visible again.

I remember doing this once before in a much much smaller boat when my family and I went on a canal boat vacation in the UK. It’s still strange to think that the same technology that drives those much smaller canals is what drives this massive cut in between two continents..

And what led to me having a wall outside my window for a few hours this morning…

Posted in Below the waterline, Historical Sites, Panama Relocation Cruise | Leave a comment

Every Hand…. – At Sea – [11/25/2019]

Posted on November 25, 2019 by GypsyShaughnessy

Every gambler knows the secret to survival
Is knowing what to throw away
And knowing what to keep
Because every hand’s a winner
And every hand’s a loser
And the best that you can hope for
Is to die in your sleep…

A while back I wrote about what it was like to be an Empath. It was a fairly honest entry…as clear as I could make it at the time.

What I didn’t mention, is that being an Empath? Seriously sucks. Sometimes. I would say perhaps most of the time. Being cursed with feeling everyone else’s emotion, and therefore with being able to see all sides to almost every situation…it leads to a lot of pain. And a whole helping of extra stress that is most likely the last thing the person needs.

And then there’s the other side of the other side of it: that thing about being able to see all sides? It makes people talk to you. People open up to you. And you end up in the middle.

Always, constantly in the bloody middle.

Oh, tell Shaughnessy, she’ll understand, she’s so good with people. Tell Shaughnessy, she’ll comprimise, she always compromises. Tell Shaughnessy, she’ll do as you ask, she’ll bend over backwards to help anyone, even if it means doing something that she really doesn’t think is the best idea. Shaughnessy can always fix everything.

I swear I should have been born a middle child. Maybe my Mum has two other daughters somewhere that would explain this scenario.

So let me put this out there: Can you trust me? Absolutely. I will take most secrets to the grave. BUT – I am done with being in the middle. As much as I can be. If you come to me with a situation that potentially involves more than one individual, I will do my best to carry what you tell me to the extent that I can. I will try to do my best to make everyone as comfortable as possible. But if I’m put in a position where I’m going to lose no matter what I do? Where I’m going to hurt someone I care about no matter which side of the line I choose? Accept that I am going to do what I think is right. And you know what? It might not be what you want, and it might not be what you ask. That doesn’t mean I care about, or accept you, or respect you any less – but in the end, I have to do what I can live with…I have to do what is going to allow me to sleep at night.

And it’s not fair for anyone, anyone to put me in a position where I’m expected to not do that.

Nor is it something I would try and do to anyone else. I have done it once once, and I had it paid back to me and yes I was furious, and I felt betrayed…but in the end? In the end I understood why that person had done what she’d done, and I understood that I had no right to have put her in that position in the first place, and I have never done that to anyone (at least not on purpose) again.

So go ahead, be angry with me. I can take it, and that’s your right. But we all have to do what we can live with, and we all have to do the best we can by those we love, even if they hate us for it.

Because you might not be happy with the decision that I made, but if you put me in the position where I felt I had to make it…you need to respect my right to do so. And as was said to me years ago, “You may hate me for it, you may never speak to me again…but at least you’ll be alive.”

 

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Windowed Musings – Puerto Calderas, Costa Rica – [11/24/2019]

Posted on November 24, 2019 by GypsyShaughnessy

Amras has told me that having this cabin has spoiled me for every other cabin.

He’s right! Going back to my normal cabin, even the one on the flagship, will be tough after this.

There is something about having a window, where you can actually see what is going on in the outside world that makes you feel so much less trapped in your environment. It’s never been uncommon for me to stay in on a port day if it’s a port I’ve seen before or if it’s an environment that is far too hot for me to handle (like today’s visit to Costa Rica), but I’ve always ended up feeling a little bit…confined in the process.

Having that porthole next to me? Makes it feel more like just sitting at home. And out here? That makes all the difference in the world. It definitely makes IPM a lot easier!

This contract is winding down though. We just have a couple of trips through the Panama Canal and then I’ll be getting on a plane in Fort Lauderdale.

And after that?

Well there’s no place like home for the holidays!

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