If I had to say when the last time my mother, brother and I all went on vacation together, it would be decades. My mother hasn’t been on many vacation trips. I don’t really know how much vacationing she may have wanted to do, but my dad never wanted to leave the house overnight, so they seldom did.
I’ve had the travel bug since I can remember. My brother never seemed to have much interest in traveling–Jack could mostly take it or leave it until recently. I can only remember one time that we, as a family, went somewhere strictly on vacation, and that was the result of a couple who were friends of my parents. I was 11, which meant Jack was 6, when Herbert and Joanne Smith persuaded my parents that the Smiths and two of their kids should go on a joint trip to Florida together with my parents and their three kids, Jack, me and our older brother, Jeff.
For months, every spare minute seemed to be spent finding every spare dollar to go toward the travel expense. We were going to Disney World and the beach in December, during the school break. That fall, I dragged burlap tow sacks up and down the rows of a lot of harvested corn fields, picking up ears of corn the combine had left behind. Those sacks full of corn meant extra money for the trip.
In another week, it will be four years since my dad died as a result of complications from Parkinson’s Disease. The last four years have brought a big transition for my mother, who was my dad’s full-time, in-home caregiver the last year of his life, though the Parkinson’s had been progressing for several years. She downsized from the same house she and my dad brought me home to from the hospital as a newborn. Now my nephew and his wife and two kids live in that house, and Mom lives in, essentially, an apartment attached to that house. It’s a good arrangement. She’s seldom actually home alone, but she has her own place and help nearby if she needs anything.
Since my brother, Jack, got married about five years ago, his wife, Carrie, has gotten him out on some great travels, including several cruises–to Alaska, Canada and the Caribbean. I never thought I was a cruise person, but when Jack raved about his experiences, I was open to the idea. Bill and I took our first cruise, from Seattle north along the western coast of Canada all the way up to Skagway, Alaska–via the “inside passage” in 2022. All our previous travel, of which there’s thankfully been a fair amount, included planes, trains and automobiles, as they say. Not to mention hotels, maps and occasional flaps of the “Where is the place?” and “We have to go back to the hotel for the thing we forgot” kind.
On a cruise ship, however, your hotel travels with you. The restaurants travel with you. The view is ever-changing and you only have to take it in.
Let’s Take a Cruise
Since Jack, Carrie, Bill and I agreed on the advantages of cruising, we began talking about getting my mother on a cruise–with all of us together. Without “together,” Mom would have had zero interest in a cruise or any other significant travel or time away from her own bed. For a family outing, she was excited and all in. She stopped at air travel, though. No flying. Which meant driving to New York City to head out on a seven-day voyage along the eastern coast of Canada as far north as Halifax, Nova Scotia. Luckily, Jack and Carrie had a vehicle big enough for all of us and our gear. After spending a night in Bristol, Tennessee, we completed the drive to New York in one day. Carrie is fearless in navigating in any kind of traffic situation, and she was a rock star dealing with the complexity of navigating New York City in a big, fine, comfy, quad-cab pickup truck.
We left the driving to Gray Line when it came to sightseeing, buying tickets for an open-topped loop of hop off, hop on destinations, and the weather could not have been more perfect.
We navigated through Times Square, past Central Park, alongside the United Nations, to Brooklyn and back. We hopped off at Grand Central Station, marveled at its star-constellation decorated ceiling, and hopped on the subway bound for the 911 Memorial.
The last time Bill and I were near Ground Zero was in 2002, seven months after the terrorist attack. All around the pit left in the ground was boarded up and a deck built around the perimeter of the damage area. As a family last September, we visited the sunken fountain formed by water falling into the pit marking the footprint of the now-gone World Trade Center. We were among maybe 150 people who approached the waist-high concrete walls surrounding the memorial fountain. People were subdued, quiet, respectful.
Once on the ship, I was dee-lighted to see how happy Mother was with the delivery of the bathrobe we ordered as a welcome gift for her.
Day 1 of the cruise was spent in sunshine on sparkling waters sailing toward Canada.
The ship had an elaborate ropes course elevated about two stories above the deck we were on–which itself was probably six stories above the surface of the water.
Carrie got suited up in a safety harness tethered to the framework of the course and proceeded to complete it, fully, in a matter of 15-20 minutes.
I wanted to do the same.
It couldn’t have been a more beautiful day, maybe a little breezy, but after getting harnessed up and mounting the steps to the ropes course starting platform, the breeze seemed to turn to gusts and the height seemed much, much higher than from looking below. I spent maybe five minutes trying to will myself to take the first step out onto a wobbly block between two big knots in a very big rope, but it was no good. I seem to be developing a fear of heights that grows with each birthday, and I knew Gina crawling like a spider on a web in a wind a few stories above the north Atlantic was not going to happen. The attendant was kind, understanding and helped me out of the harness.
Bummer.
Our first shore excursion was to Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park in St. John, New Brunswick.
It’s made up of a beach area sprouting solid rocks the size of grain silos. When the tide is in, those rocks are submerged beneath water that is 50 feet higher than at low tide. The tide was out when we visited, so we got to walk on the ocean floor and stare up at those rock giants as we moseyed along the beach.
A Shock from Home
Our second port stop was Halifax, Nova Scotia.
There we learned all kinds of interesting stuff, starting with the fact that Halifax was the nearest seaport with railroads to where the Titanic sank in 1912, and 150 of its recovered passengers were buried in a cemetery in that city. We saw headstones of men, women and children. Just after visiting that cemetery and re-boarding the motor coach for our next stop, Carrie saw a text message from her brother back in Tennessee asking her to call. We were just getting re-situated into our seats when Carrie cried out and handed the phone to Jack. Her brother had just told her their father had passed away unexpectedly. Other passengers on the bus looked around at the commotion. Jack led carrie from the bus so that they could take a cab back to the ship. As they stepped off, our guide looked back at me and I explained that Carrie had just gotten some bad family news. I remember the guide’s composure as she said for the benefit of the others on the bus how hard it can be to get difficult news when we’re so far from home.
On we went to a stunning little coastal village, Peggy’s Cove, home to the most-photographed lighthouse in Canada and enormous rocks well-worn and rounded by the powerful waves that pound into them. It wasn’t the same without Jack and Carrie there and, even as we took in the beauty, the thought of how she must be feeling never left my mind. I watched as one wave after another flung itself into the shore with a loud whoosh, its foam and spray reaching for the sky before giving in to gravity and returning to the jade green water to try all over again. Now and then, the whipping wind–against which I’d covered my head with the hood of my jacket–would nudge me this way or that. I literally could have stood there and watched for hours.
Our day included tripping through other parts of Nova Scotia, visiting a museum honoring Alexander Graham Bell–a Nova Scotian, and learning fun facts from our guide, such as that other famous sons and daughters include luxury cruise line founder Samuel Cunard and Anne Murray.
When we made it back to the ship, Carrie was still trying to process the news and had been trying to figure out how and if she and Jack needed to get back home. Talking with her brothers and mother, plans were made for a funeral a couple of days after we returned. That eased some of Carrie’s stress, but of course the reality of her father’s passing still weighed heavily.
The next day, the ship docked in the town of Sydney on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. Bill, Mother and I took a ride through what is beautiful lake country on our way to the “Highland Village Museum Park,” dedicated to the heritage of Scottish highlanders who settled in the area. A thatched-roof hut, cabins, church building and blacksmith shed are there to recreate the setting of pre-industrial Scotland’s highland life. “Nova Scotia” is latin for “New Scotland,” after all.
Another fine day.
Heading for Home
The next day was our last on the cruise–another full day at sea. Carrie was still struggling but doing a little better. We all made a last run at the Guy Fieri’s burger stand on the ship, soft-serve ice cream, the karaoke bar–where the same two or three regulars were on the mic every evening we’d visited, big-prize bingo (none of us won anything), and I visited the spa for a one-hour massage. I think we closed out our time on the Carnival Venezia strong.
By 8 a.m. the next day, we were re-loading our vehicle and saying goodbye to the Big Apple. Not only is Carrie fearless about navigating unfamiliar territory, she wanted to drive to give her mind a distraction. We made it back to my mom’s place, where we had all met up to start our adventure, in about 12 hours. Then Bill and I headed home to Chattanooga. The next day, a Sunday, we swung by Mom’s place to pick her up on the way to Monterey to visit with Carrie’s family at the funeral home handling her father’s arrangements.
Everything about the vacation wasn’t perfect, but I’m so grateful for it. The time was the most I’d gotten to spend with Jack since I was 18, and it was the first family vacation–plus spouses, but minus Dad and our older brother–since that one time, in our childhood. I cherish the good memories we made, and there are plenty.
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