Oct. 3

Kleenex please.

$15 for a bottle of cough syrup! A small bottle! That’s what it costs if you get sick on a cruise and need cough syrup. I brought everything I could think of with me – even cough drops – but the syrup was a liquid and I figured I’d live dangerously and go without. I would like to blame Russia for my cold, but it was probably brewing before landing. And my dear son, Fr Johnny, has been on a cruise with me when I had a cough and he can attest to the fact that NO ONE gets sleep when I get a cough. So I am miserable. I ate a light dinner alone last night. Tried to get up this morning, but have been fighting the chills and fever all night and day. Luckily we are at sea today and tomorrow on route to Japan. So I am resting, but it is boring. I’m too sick to do anything, but I can’t sleep either. If I leave the room to get tea, people try to talk to me and I don’t feel good enough to talk. The room service boy even wanted to talk!?! TV has 3 channels of movies I have seen and the rest are ship channels that all the old people watch, which now include me. One channel is all about the upcoming shore excursions you can buy. I actually watched it and changed one of my tickets. I had to turn it off or I’d drive the Shore Excursion Desk crazy. I’m terribly worried about how far behind I’ll be in watercolor class, but I’m sure the teacher is relieved I’m absent. Now someone is going to stake a claim to my seat!!! This is the first time I have missed home. I want my own bed, my own couch, my own remote control. There’s no place like home when you are sick.

Anyway, the Captain said we are sailing past a long line of islands that both Russia and Japan claim as theirs.  I don’t recall their name and we can’t see them, but I’m sure you can look it up on the internet. Obviously two worlds are colliding somewhere beyond my sight. And if there is one thing I am learning so far on this cruise it is that man has never been satisfied for long with where he is on this earth. We move. Whether for resources, power, or curiosity, as a species, we move. No other species moves about except for survival. We do it for that too, but so many other reasons also. It often leads to war and bloodshed, but also to intermingling of ethnicities and sharing of knowledge. Where would I be right now if 10 generations ago no one moved from the villages they were born in? I can’t even answer that because my heritage is so varied my ancestors never would have met, and if I was descended from the same villagers I would be so inbred I would not be intelligent enough to read or write, let alone type. The very same spark that causes us to push and pull and fight and grab also moves us to reach and carry and teach and learn. It makes us human. And when I look at a person and can’t for the life of me figure out where in the world that person came from, I realize I am seeing the Divine Will come alive in our species. For God created us not as Japanese, Russian, African, Israeli, German, Indian, Arab, but as humans designed for His love. He sees our souls and wants us to see that in one another also. And the more we travel, the more we intermingle, the more we learn, the greater our capacity for love. And that is the true adventure in life!