I have always considered myself to be pretty even tempered. It takes an awful lot to ruffle my feathers but I am able to let it go quickly and I always look for the good in every situation. Thankfully both of my boys are like me in that regard and it has helped us all to move through some difficult times. All of that was put to the test in one of the hardest 12 month periods of our lives.
It all began on 11/13/2008 when my brother, the boys’ favorite uncle, was killed. We were in shock of course and felt a loss that we never imagined experiencing, little did we know that losing Warren was only the beginning. Over the next year we experienced 7 more deaths in our circle. We lost cousins, uncles, my own father and eventually 2 of Chris’s close friends. Though we had our faith, we were still struggling with just finding some positive in our lives. That is when I had one of my crazy ideas.
I decided that we needed to plan something to simply celebrate life, something that we could look forward to doing and something that could remind us of the good around us. The very next morning I received one of those emails offering a 3-day Carnival cruise and the price was amazing. We had never been on a cruise and they always looked like fun on “The Love Boat” so I figured what the heck let’s go for it!
We planned the cruise for the following Spring and for the most part it looked perfect. As we got closer Chris’s college schedule hit a snag with our cruise and we ended up having to postpone the trip to Thanksgiving weekend. It still seemed like a good idea and after our turkey dinner we drove to Long Beach and the beginning of a grand adventure.
We quickly learned that perhaps we are not “cruise” kind of people. The ship we were booked on was very tiny and as we soon learned there is not much to do on a ship.
The temperature was too cold to sit on deck and read, the pools were freezing, there was just one basketball net and 3 balls for everyone, mini golf was missing the clubs, the same dinner show played every night and the same comedians told the same jokes in the same show every night!! As we wandered around we quickly figured out that the only thing to do was play ping pong. We played and played and played and played from Long Beach to Ensenada. Once we got off of the ship to tour the town we found ourselves on an entirely new adventure.
We wandered through the town exploring the shops and such and then saw the ATV rentals. The guy informed us we could take them down on the beach and explore the coast. He gave us a map and we were on our way. We really were having a blast exploring until I came upon a hut that reminded me of Gilligan’s Island. Just as I got close a military man with a very large gun came out and told us to go away! We took off in the other direction until we were stopped again but this time by a Mexican police officer yelling at us over his car loud speaker to get off the beach! We quickly headed back to the town and happily turned in those ATV’s before we got ourselves in trouble. Back on the ship and heading for home meant, yes more ping pong!!
I joke about how much we played but really it seemed like that was about all we did the entire trip but looking back I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Yes we were bored out of our minds during the repeated shows, yelled at by armed men in a foreign country and were tortured with ping pong for 3 solid days but it was exactly what we needed. During that trip we spent
the time talking. We talked about those we lost, we talked about those we have in our lives and we spent a lot of time talking about us and how much we truly love and value each other. It is so easy to get caught up with the craziness of life and to take people for granted but that terrible time taught us to value what matters most and for us that means the time that we have with those we love.