Becoming Family
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Looking back, the cruise was more than a vacation.
It was the first real vacation I ever took with members of my family.
Not a holiday gathering.
Not a weekend visit.
Not a trip to see relatives.
An actual vacation where the whole point was spending time together.
My sisters were there.
Lisa's family was there.
Our children were there.
Jay and Peggy were there.
For one week, all the people I cared about found themselves on the same ship headed toward the same adventure.
I don't remember much about the ports.
I don't remember many of the excursions.
What I remember are the people.
I remember boarding the ship and feeling amazed by its size.
I remember Peggy getting pulled aside for additional screening at security.
That wasn't exactly how any of us expected the trip to begin.
The rest of us waited while Peggy endured the extra attention, and before long it became one of those family stories we laughed about later.
Once aboard, the ship felt like a floating city.
Restaurants.
Shops.
Theaters.
Pools.
More decks than I could keep track of.
Even Jay was impressed.
That says something because Jay had already spent time on large ships during his Navy years.
He had seen ships built for work.
Ships built for war.
Ships built for moving people and equipment around the world.
What he had never experienced was a ship built entirely for pleasure.
I remember him wandering the decks, taking it all in with the curiosity of a man who appreciated how remarkable the whole thing really was.
The funny part was how naturally everyone blended together.
My family loved Jay and Peggy almost immediately.
There was no awkward adjustment period.
No feeling each other out.
No sense of two separate families trying to coexist.
They simply fit.
And Jay and Peggy loved them right back.
It felt effortless.
Like we had all known each other longer than we actually had.
The evenings became my favorite part of the trip.
Every night we found our way back to the dining room.
Chairs would be pulled out.
Meals would arrive.
Conversations would begin.
And before long Jay would be telling stories.
He had an endless supply of them.
Stories about coon hunts.
Stories about trail rides.
Stories about people he had known decades earlier.
The thing about Jay was that he seemed to know everyone.
You could walk into a grocery store with him and somehow he would run into somebody he knew.
If he didn't know them personally, he knew their cousin.
Or their uncle.
Or somebody who had married into their family.
Within minutes he would be explaining how they were connected to someone else he knew.
His world was built from relationships and stories.
Everything reminded him of another story.
And at those dinners, we all got to enjoy them.
The stories never felt old.
Even when we had heard them before.
The story itself was the entertainment.
I think everyone looked forward to them.
Christian and Amber found themselves in a unique position on the trip.
Many of the adults naturally paired off as couples.
They didn't have anyone attached to their arm.
So they teamed up together.
They explored the ship.
They wandered the decks.
They became traveling companions for the week.
Looking back, I smile when I think about that.
The cruise wasn't just bringing Lisa's family and my family together.
It was bringing all of us together.
Even Peggy, who spent much of the trip using her scooter, was part of everything.
She wasn't sitting at home.
She wasn't missing out.
She was there.
At the dinners.
In the conversations.
In the memories.
The cruise wasn't about what anyone could or couldn't do.
It was about being together.
One of my favorite memories belongs to Jay.
Most evenings he stayed close to Peggy until she was ready for bed.
After she settled in and drifted off to sleep, he would quietly slip away.
Usually for the same reason.
Ice cream.
Years later he would still talk about it.
Every now and then he would grin and say,
"We should all just go up to Deck 13 and get some ice cream."
The ship was long gone by then.
The cruise was over.
Life had moved on.
But I don't think Jay was really talking about ice cream.
I think he was talking about us.
For one week, everybody he cared about was together.
No work.
No schedules.
No responsibilities.
Just family.
Years later I tried to convince Jay and Peggy to go on another cruise.
I wanted another adventure.
Another week together.
Another chance to make memories.
But by then their health had begun to change.
The trip that once seemed easy was no longer realistic.
What we thought was the first cruise turned out to be the only cruise.
At the time, none of us knew that.
We were too busy laughing.
Too busy eating.
Too busy listening to Jay's stories.
Too busy becoming family.
Looking back, I don't remember the ship.
I remember the table.
I remember the conversations.
I remember the laughter.
I remember Jay telling stories while everyone listened.
And for one week, somewhere in the middle of the ocean, two families stopped feeling separate.
They simply became one.