Mr. and Mrs. Teabody Take to the High Seas

Mr. and Mrs. Teabody Take to the High Seas

How is winter 2014 progressing for you, Gentle Reader? Is your heart longing for longer, sunnier days? Is your sitting room strewn with the various brightly-colored catalogues from Mister Burpee and from Wild Flower Farm? Have you, in fact, already purchased potting soil and begun the process of growing your own fledgling tomato plants, rutabagas and broccoli rabe? My, how wonderfully sensible you are! It is always a good plan to look springward whilst one sits hopefully gazing at the bleak, wintry landscape just outside one’s window. On an especially fortunate day one may even catch two or three errant sunbeams incising the leaden January skies.

Mrs. Teabody adores how the large windows of Chez Teabody look out into nature on even the winteriest days. The Teabodys love home. And they especially love the luxury of planting their feet firmly on the ground. However, a few months back when Mrs. Teabody suffered one of her rare lapses in judgment, she decided that the time was ripe for Mr. Teabody and herself to venture southward a thousand miles or so and persuade Mr. Teabody’s ancient auntie to leave the safety of her southern Florida home to go on an adventure – specifically a four-day cruise of the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Sky. What promises of fun and frolic leapt from their website and brochures! Perhaps you’ve seen the pictures of cruisers frolicking about, wide smiles on their faces, sun-kissed skin flattered by trendy togs? “Music everywhere!” “Poolside Fun with your Cruise Staff!”, “Be a Star at Norwegian’s White Hot Party!” were just a sampling of the fresh travel experiences tempting the Teabodys. O, What Fun!

Gentle Reader, at no time did Mrs. Teabody believe that she would actually enjoy the cruising experience. And isn’t it a marvelous thing to be right? This blog chronicles four days on the high seas under what was intended to be the most pleasant of experiences. Folks go on cruises all the time, after all, paying thousands of dollars for the privilege of being tossed about willy-nilly on the waves in a perpetual state of La Mal de Mer all the while wearing a pasted-on smile against one’s equally pasty complexion. The Teabodys' vessel, “Sky” was to leave from the Port of Miami and as the chauffeur angled the car along the narrow passageways between towering buildings, Mrs. Teabody experienced full throttle trepidation.

Mrs. Teabody knew better of course. Ask anyone who suffers La Mal de Mer and she will tell you what it is to be violently sick anytime one sets foot on a conveyance floating on water. Indeed, Mrs. Teabody’s illness is of such intensity that her stomach churns at the sight of an upended snow globe. Nonetheless, pamphlets and travel magazines exerted their persuasive powers to allay Mrs. Teabody’s fears as the sheer size of a cruise ship would be ample buffer between Mrs. Teabody's sensitive insides and the energetic and frolic-ing waves of the sea.  “You won’t feel a thing!” “You won’t even know you’re moving,” “Stable-izers!”exhorted Mrs. Teabody’s friends, but the back of Mrs. Teabody's mind held memories of herself being most unattractively sick on a glass-bottomed boat in Key Largo, of being sick on a ferry to the Aran Islands, of being sick on the ferry between Cape May and Lewes, Delaware. One needs only so many experiences of being sick in public to know that the seafaring life is not for everyone. Since not everyone suffers from La Mal de Mer, Mrs. Teabody would like to share exactly what sea sickness feels like. Attend: Inside the back of Mrs. Teabody’s head near the base of her skull sits a full-sized mouse at a table. The mouse has a rubber stamp in his hand. Every few seconds a paper is slapped down atop the table and the mouse brings down the rubber stamp onto the paper with a great plop. This action is repeated at rhythmic intervals. Simultaneously, the dome of Mrs. Teabody’s cranium -- the part bisected by the band of a hat – hosts a series of experiences: eight or ten bees buzzing noiselessly, shards of ice bumping against each other in sloshing liquid, and the worst: the feeling that the sides of one’s head  being squeezed together like the sides of a toothpaste tube. The only feeling to rival all of this cranial activity is that of one’s bodily fluids. Here you must think of ALL liquid bodily fluids: every liquid drop from post nasal drip to pent up tears, to yesterday’s unprocessed cup of Earl Grey to the four pints of plasma coursing one’s vast circulatory empire to the tiniest stores of synovial fluid, to mysterious lymph and to the most mundane beads of perspiration. ALL fluids! The great ship lurches! Suddenly, with matching empathy all one’s bodily fluids rush forward in one great heaving gush only to find themselves retracted nano seconds later like a short, smart rubber band. Bile rises. The cranial mousie stamps another paper, the bees buzz, the ice shards bump and shatter; the squeeze squeezes. Lurch. Heave. Swallow. Companions note one’s silence. 

“How are you feeling NOW, Dearie?”they inquire with the solicitousness generally reserved for Michael Vick.

“Better,” lies Mrs. Teabody. “I am feeling better.” Have you noticed that no one ever really wants to know the truth?

At this juncture many of you are wondering why Mrs. Teabody had not prepared for her sojourn with appropriate medication. Well, indeed, she HAD!  Mrs. Teabody had purchased two boxes of Bonine, a drug almost universally praised by Mrs. Teabody’s know-it-all friends. Bonine self touts as being both chewable and raspberry- flavored. Now. Mrs. Teabody must be perfectly clear. Bonine does not CURE La Mal de Mer. No. What it does is establish a few little one-way trapdoors along one’s digestive system, permitting food to enter and traverse the digestive tract but not to make the return trip upwards to slosh upon the immaculate white linens of tabletop or bedding or squarely in the midst of a foxtrot lesson on the dance floor to the abject mortification of one’s companions. In the current vernacular: Mrs. Teabody did not HURL. A good thing. Because what cruises are best known for is the availability of food. All kinds. All hours. Unlimited quantities. It is insane to offer so much food. Irresponsible. Hedonistic. Ice cream with brownies and/ or pound cake and/or cherry cobbler? Four styles of calamari? Osso Bucca? Just ask. Lemon curd cheesecake or a nice lamb shank? Their “pleasure.” Lobster roll with a chaser of potato chips and baked beans with a soupcon of grape juice, a little Bernaise on the side? “That will take just a moment.” And that was just breakfast room service. The most resolute calorie counter in the universe would cave under such pressure. Not that calorie counting is a big part of Mrs. Teabody’s leisure activities. But who can enjoy food when one's body is rejecting the idea of even opening one's eyes? Mon Dieu!

So you see what a cruel equivocator a cruise vacation can be. It places one in the most beautiful of locations,  atop the rolling sea, and renders the body almost incapable of standing upright. It offers hundreds of diversions and takes away the stamina to engage in them. But most importantly of all, it offers the greatest array of foods imaginable and then places the digestive system into a perpetual state of fight or flight. Cruel indeed.

This was, of course, Mrs. Teabody’s first and last cruise, and truth to tell, Mr. Teabody, himself a noteworthy sailor, wants no more of life on the high seas. Truly a ONCE in a lifetime experience. Lesson learned. Experience chronicled. The last week of February will find the Teabodys on the road again-- this time to their favorite sunny spot, Isla Mujeres, where they are happiest: lounge-chaired under a gaily-striped beach umbrella tossing back margaritas while their bare toes wiggle in warm coral-derived sand. And the sea? That beautiful azure and turquoise and aqua and jade sea? Exactly where it should be. Not UNDER the Teabodys. No. Rolling along nicely, waves cresting as high as they like, ebbing and flowing to beat the band. And bound nicely AWAY by the shore.

Come sail away? Not bloody likely.