The Odyssey: Part I

My grandmother gallivants; she straps on her gold sandals, packs her suitcase with linen skirts and turquoise jewelry--right up to the weight limit-- and sets out. Katie she said Soon as you finish school let’s take us a trip to celebrate. Somewhere warm! So we found a ship, booked our tickets, and counted down the days during the hard months between winter and summer. In between taking practice exams, I bought a pair of gold sandals. Squirrel signed on and the party was complete: 3 single gals on the high seas! And then my grandmother called with the news that her gallbladder was acting up again and that the doctor said it was time to have it out – 2 days before we set sail. So Squirrel and I packed our trunks and met in New York. We boarded at the pier in Brooklyn and stood on the open air deck, waving goodbye to our grandmothers and our great-grand parents as our ship passed Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty—two single gals in gold sandals where there should’ve been three.

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Bermuda is 26 square miles or so, a chain of rock slabs in the middle of the North Atlantic. The local pilot sails out to meet our ship in the hours before dawn and guides us toward the Royal Navy Shipyard. The night before, we stood along the rail of the promenade deck, looking toward the indistinguishable line of the horizon, where cobalt sky meets obsidian sea. Seafaring has always fascinated me -- the crazy-brave (mostly) men who boarded wooden vessels and used rope, cloth, stars, and wind to navigate unknown lands and unknowable depths. I picture our mammoth ship as a tiny speck in a vast ocean of blue, days away from any firmament, any green. I feel the imaginary pitch and reel of our vessel as the squall bounces us from crest to trough, flooding the deck and hull with brine faster than the bilge can pump it out. Retreating from my imagining, we turn and find refuge in the martini bar where the piano man plays the shanties of our day. We fall asleep in our air conditioned state room that night, and I can’t help but think that perhaps I would not be so intrepid and bold as I’d like to think. Maybe I would’ve stayed in London, in Barcelona or Lisbon, sweeping my narrow patch of ground, tending my lot in life, pushing back thoughts of anything more and bidding God speed to those brave enough to seek their fortune elsewhere. The next morning, though, we stand on our little balcony as the pilot leads us through the rocky channel. Our ship slices through water so aquamarine and sky so turquoise, that I can scarcely take it in. I begin to understand what compelled even ordinary people to leave their homes and loved ones. For all the men who never came back, swallowed up by the sea, it only took one safe return, one first-hand tale to play down the risks, to talk up the possibility. You must see it for yourself to believe it. The blues and the greens. The chance of gold.