Touch You Last

The first day at sea, like most days at sea, was laid back and lazy. The kids spent most of their time in the Fun Factory, we swam again (I think?), we browsed the stores, some of us gambled, and some of us napped. So rather that add detail to those exciting events, I'll just write about the kid's friends and post a cute video. At the Fun Factory, Teddy became immediate best friends with Eamon from California, who I thought of as Little Boy Tarzan. He was a handsome little dude, Teddy's age, with long, long hair. (Apparently Veronica had never seen hair like that on a boy before because up until the last day, she insisted he was a girl.) Veronica's friends were Summer and Sophia, from Ann Arbor. Super lovely, very tall girls who looked like twins but weren't (they were actually a year apart in age but almost exactly the same height.) We chatted with their parents a few times through the cruise and they were also lovely. That's all for now abou...

As far as the other guests go, it’s been an unusual cruise for two reasons. One: there are a lot of newbies on board. People wandering around more or less lost, not knowing what’s free and what costs extra, not really even knowing the perks of things they’ve actually paid for. Second, there’s also a lot of folks who just don’t like kids, or at least don’t want to see them on their vacation. Nobody’s really horrible about it – the most we really get is cut-eye in the elevators or snark at the buffet – but it’s a different experience then we’ve had in the past. On a typical cruise, two out of every three people we run into smile or chat with our kids, or they tell us about grandkids at home that they’re missing. But this time it’s the two thirds that are gritting their teeth when we walk by, or saying things like, “Better you than me, man!” I’m not even offended, it’s just… peculiar. I love traveling with my kids. And (if you can pardon the platitude) I love how it lets me see t...

Sarah has a lot of qualities I love -- that's not exactly a secret. But one of the greatest things about having kids has been seeing her best qualities appear in them. Specifically: Compassion - I see this in the girls, even Susannah who's not yet two. If someone is crying or even just a little bit upset, the girls are in there right away, hugging, saying, "It's okay, my sweetie," (if it's Veronica) or, "Po' Teddy!" (if it's Susannah). And Veronica has a long term concern for people that's rare in kids. She's had grandparents with bad backs, a dad with a bum foot, and other friends with health issues, and she'll ask them about it every time she sees them. That's Sarah: thinking and worrying about others, all the time. Enthusiasm - This is the clearest one -- the one people see in our kids and immediately say, "I know where they get that from." If you know Teddy at all, one of the principal words you'd use to ...

Out last port day was St. Maarten, which I’d remembered really loving in the past. White sand beaches, gentle tides, some people hustling trinkets and braids, but not at overwhelming of them. This time, St. Maarten was a total shit-show. Immediately off the boat, things weren’t too bad. There was generic cruise shopping right past the pier, but the main beach and the better shops were downtown –accessible by ferry, cab, or a very long walk. Mom and Dad took a cab and we went with the ferry, and that was all well and good, but once we got to the other side, cabbies and merchants were mobbed up at the exit, hollering at prospects as they stepped off the ferry, “Hey! Lady in the black dress! I’ll give you an island tour: twenty dollars!” We attracted a little less attention than most folks, due to size of the family and ages of the kids, but a guy renting beach chairs attached himself to us right away. Then what sounded like ten dollars for a couple of chairs became ten dollars per ...

This was our second of three consecutive port days and it turned out to be the best of the bunch. We stopped in St. Thomas, which Sarah and I had been to previously and which I didn’t remember being overly fond of. But again, any tropical island is better than Ottawa in February, but in our past Caribbean cruises, St. Thomas was always the least distinctive stop. I also remembered it teaming with people trying to braid hair, sell trinkets, or give island tours. But our experience this time was completely different. Sarah booked an excursion to Sapphire Beach for us and the kids. (My parents, not being beach people, opted to wander close to port and shop instead.) It started with a shuttle to the other side of the island – lots of hairpin turns and roads curving along the edge of a giant cliff, which always makes me think, “How do people learn to drive here?!?” and then makes me think, “How bored would these people be driving in some Canadian suburb?” The driver was a wonderful guy,...