Message In A Bottle
Whether you remember the song by The Police (featuring a very sexy Sting) or the very tragic Nicholas Sparks love story from the movie, for the average person, there seems to be something poetic about the words “message in a bottle”. Perhaps scenes of a shipwreck come to mind. Or something scientific with testing the strength of the ocean currents. Who knows what inspires it but history has traced “message in a bottle” as far back as 310 BC as something that the ancient Greeks used for research. Either way, I recently received an email with a heading where someone had placed a photo of a bottle nestled in the sand with the tide washing around it. It brought back memories.
I was 19 and my Mom and I were heading out for a holiday adventure, a luxury cruise out of Miami on a ship called the TSS Fairwind. It was our second cruise but the first time being away from family for Christmas. In our excitement, we loaded our luggage in the car the night before, so that our pre-dawn morning departure was uncomplicated and less stressful. We arrived at the Pittsburgh airport, unloaded our bags and all of a sudden Mom realized that the suitcase containing our formal dresses was left behind in our apartment! Back then, you had to be formally dressed or you couldn’t dine in the formal dining room. Oh no! Since we were also in the midst of a major move, it was an easy mistake but one that was going to cost us. There was no way we could make that round trip without missing our morning flight! What to do! Shoving my tickets in my hand, Mom said, “Take the luggage, get on the plane and I’ll meet you in Miami. I’m heading home to get that suitcase!” To the 19 year old version of me, I was aghast! I was so shocked, I didn’t break down and cry but the entire trip south, all I could think about was going on the cruise and spending Christmas and my birthday by myself. Yes, I had myself a good old-fashioned pity party!
I arrived in Miami where my grandparents rescued me and took me to the ship. I checked in, handing over my information and luggage and then the three of us sat there in the terminal and waited. And we waited. And we waited some more. We had no idea what flight Mom would come in on and we didn’t want to miss her. The hours ticked by. Day turned to night. No Mom. No word. I paced, I sat down, I tried to talk to my grandparents, but nothing really worked. As the minutes edged towards the “all aboard” time, my grandparents left and headed back to their winter home in Fort Lauderdale. Despondently I headed to the gangway, still with the belief that I was going on that cruise completely alone. Then an announcement came over the PA system and relief flooded my entire body! The posted sailing time was being pushed back because we were waiting on 12 passengers whose flights had been delayed by the winter weather up north. (This is one serious perk when you book your flights through the cruise line … the ship waits for you.) Fingers crossed that she was part of the 12, and I waited for Mom’s smiling face to appear.
The Port of Miami
Holds the title of being the busiest cruise port in the world with more than 4 million seagoing passengers visiting each year.
And then a second announcement with second delay to our sailing time. Apparently, the bus that was transporting the 12 guests and one driver, yes that superstitious count of 13, had caught fire on the Miami Causeway and they had to pull over and wait for help. They were then transferred to another bus and were finally on their way. I told Mom at a later date, I had this “I Love Lucy” vision filling my head with pictures of her climbing the Jacob’s Ladder up the side of the ship as we sailed towards the Caribbean! Hallelujah, there she was. Missing suitcase in hand, her exhausted but smiling face appearing on the gangway along with the 11 remaining guests, I hugged her in relief. The gangway was pulled and as we set sail, we headed to the formal dining room for the Welcome Board festivities.
Our table was full of couples and we were the only Mother/Daughter combination. No one seemed to mind. They all enjoyed hearing the drama of Mom’s journey to the ship, including the arrival at the Pittsburgh airport without the important suitcase and then of course the fire. It was like she had become a mini-celebrity! The other couples loved telling everyone the “inside scoop” about our delayed departure. Of our table mates, one particular couple stood out. Jim and Diane Sanford. From Seattle, they were fun, full of life, and loved to laugh. Jim worked for Boeing and had some fascinating stories about building airplanes. Throughout the cruise and our various ports of call, Mom and I ended up spending a lot of time ashore and onboard with them. From dinners to the evening showtimes and tours ashore, the days merged into one happy blur. One tradition that the Fairwind introduced us to which is still a family practice for us each year is the “Wish Wash Tree”. Because this was a Christmas Cruise, they had placed a small live tree on the ship’s mast. On the day after Christmas, which many know as Boxing Day, they brought the tree down and invited all of the guests to the top deck. We were given a piece of paper with instructions to write down all of our “wishes” on one side and our “washes” on the other side. The “washes” were all of those things that sucked from the previous year and we could wash them out of our lives. Fun, right? Once we had our papers done, they were tied to the tree and then the tree was disposed of. If I remember correctly, the crew then burned the Wish Wash Tree in the incinerator.
The fast friendship with Jim and Diane called for a celebration so we decided to commemorate our journey together by having a “message in a bottle” ceremony on the last formal night of the cruise. At dinner, wine was ordered and the bottle and cork saved for our ritual. Jim, Diane, Mom and I each wrote a note on a piece of paper, dropped it into the now empty bottle, sealed it with the cork and then headed up to an open deck. We blessed it before Jim, with his strong throwing arm, chucked the bottle out into the open sea*. This was long before any of us were concerned about polluting the oceans. I stood there wondering if the bottle would ever wash up on a foreign shore. Since we were cruising in the Caribbean Sea, that left a lot of open shoreline available. I felt like a character from an old movie or some stranded female from a romance novel. My innocent heart even considered the idea that some handsome, roguish man would find my note and come to rescue me. As the night turned dark and the blanket of stars appeared in the sky, the four of us headed back inside and the evening’s entertainment.
Sadly our cruise came to an end, thankfully a lot more peacefully than it started. We had made some good friends in the process and a ton of happy memories. With lingering memories of our message in the bottle ritual we said our goodbyes to the crew and our fellow guests, as Mom and I headed to the airport, flying back into the cold North. This time all suitcases in our possession.
Walked out this morning, I don't believe what I saw
A hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore
Seems I'm not alone in being alone
A hundred billion castaways looking for a home
From Message In A Bottle by The Police
About six months later, and an entirely new home in Boston, a strange letter arrived in the mail, postmark New Orleans. I didn’t recognize the return name and address but curiosity got the best of me and I tore open the envelope. Inside was a letter from a family in New Orleans who had found our bottle on the beach during a recent walk! Yes, our message in the bottle had washed ashore! In the hundreds of miles that it floated, carried on the warm currents of the Caribbean Sea, the cork had leaked, erasing all but our name and address in Boston. They wrote just to let us know that it had been found. To this day, it still amazes me that our message in the bottle actually found its way into someone’s hands. Amazing indeed. And at 19, I had no idea that just a few years later, I would be walking up a cruise ship’s gangway in an official capacity, embarking on a career that would last me 20 years.
*Please note that I am in no way, shape, or form, encouraging the reader to do something like this today. Many years after our ceremony, the cruise lines implemented a Zero Overboard policy and I doubt that our message in the bottle ceremony was that catalyst for that blessed change. I’m sure we weren’t the first nor the last to do it.