He's finally aboard the ship of dreams

By Andrew Skerritt, Times Staff Writer
Published November 25, 2007

It was a Friday night. There I was alone on the upper deck of the Regal Empress as it sailed southwest from Miami toward the Bahamas. A headwind bathed my face and cooled the late September night. I reveled in my momentary solitude amid this floating barrel of excess. My wife and two children were somewhere below with the rest of our traveling party.

This was my first cruise. Growing up on a Caribbean island, I had seen luxury liners at a distance, symbols of commerce, American greenbacks. We, the natives, were part of the port-of-call spectacle.

Now I stood on the other side of the gangplank. As I gazed into the night, the pitch blackness was interrupted by a thousand lights. It was another cruise ship, its lights stacked tall like a phantom hotel gliding on the ocean.

The lights evoke life, levity, people making merry. It was easy to imagine the revelry aboard the other ship: adults dancing, kids swimming, chiming slots, the bingo announcer's clipped cadence. But that night, it was impossible for me to see the lights of a ship in the darkness without being reminded of the link between me, a gray-haired, 40-something, and a skinny teenager sitting on a seawall on a small island, staring out to sea.

Caught in the frothy wake of memory, 1,000 miles away, 25 years before, I am seated again on the seawall in the port on the island of Montserrat. My back is firmly jammed against a metal utility pole. The naked white lightbulb 10 feet above me barely scratches the darkness. The night is quiet except for the splash of waves against rocks, the rare pedestrian passerby and the chatter of taxi cab drivers, waiting at the War Memorial for late-night fares.

To the old men who sat on the concrete jetty fishing all night, the calmness was reassuring; but to an 18-year-old, it was maddening. It felt like a world devoid of opportunity. As I gazed into the night, I fantasized about the big city, what my life would be like beyond the ocean and away from my sleepy British colonial homeland.

That longing haunted me, kept me awake late into the night, drove me to stalk the streets of the capital, Plymouth, leading to the seawall. And as I gazed into the distance, the salty twinge in the breeze seasoned that restlessness. That's when I'd notice the cruise ships passing in the night. I wanted to swim toward the lights, climb aboard and join in the merriment.

The American continent fading quickly astern, it finally hit me that the dissatisfied teen sitting on the seawall had become a man, a father - comfortable, middle class, somewhat accomplished. I was no longer merely pursuing dreams; I was living them.

I was finally sailing amid the merriment if not in luxury. I had become one of those lights flickering in the ocean darkness. My ship had come in.

Andrew Skerritt is a Hernando and Pasco columnist for the Times.

[Last modified November 23, 2007, 12:26:05]