COME
SAIL AWAY
(A SHORT STORY BY TRAYC FOSKETT FOR THE
7-DAY WRITING CHALLENGE ~ DAY 2)
You’re kidding, right?
You HAVE to be kidding!
WHAT do you want us to do?
My best friends, Miranda, Melody
and Susan couldn’t believe what I was asking them to do. No. Scratch that. They
wouldn’t believe I, the stable and serious Samantha, was actually taking a trip
I had dreamt of taking my entire life and asking them to come with me.
To be honest, I couldn’t really
believe it, either. I mean, when you spend most of your days looking for ways
to save your company money and are constantly aware of how expensive things are
you’re not the best candidate to plop down a chunk of change on a frivolous
trip like a 21-day cruise to the Western Mediterranean. Every day I can be
found in my cubicle looking at expense reports from James & Company’s
massive sales force analyzing everything from the type of hotel they stay at on
business trips to how much of their entertainment budget is truly necessary. If
they order 3 glasses of wine with dinner I give them a red mark and send a
wonderfully worded letter of warning insisting that next time they can stick to
two glasses or find a new employer. When I’m at home I am usually looking for
ways to cut expenses, too. I cut my cable bill by half last year, and who needs
a home phone and a cell phone? Thankyaverymuch I saved big bucks just going
mobile. I guess you could say I am frugal to a fault.
So why on earth would I spend
thousands of dollars on a trip that wasn’t only uber expensive but also took me
away from my source of income for three weeks? Probably because of what
happened last Wednesday on my way to work.
Last Tuesday night my friends and I
went out to celebrate Janice’s birthday. She was turning 29 and we wanted to
celebrate the last year of her Terrific Twenties in style so we had all gotten together
and had an old-school slumber party. I know, you’re thinking, “on a work
night?!” YES! We decided to not wait until the weekend because when we were
girls the best possible gift our parents could give us was to have our
girlfriends over for a slumber party on a school night. Of course, that never
happened, so we took matters into our own hands and had a slumber party on a
work night. Thankfully we all have understanding bosses who won’t get too stern
with us when we’re all yawning all day on the job.
It was a great party. We watched
chick flicks, ate pizza and popcorn and made chocolate chip cookies. Okay, we
made chocolate chip cookie *dough.* It’s not our fault those little balls of
dough never quite made it into the oven! We laughed and talked and giggled like
teenagers into the wee hours of the morning. When we finally fell asleep it was
with smiles on our faces and the understanding that we had the best friends
ever.
Wednesday morning we all got up and
got ready for work. We were tired, but coffee and laughter helped us all. Since
a few of the girls all worked in the same area of town they decided to carpool
in together. I said my goodbyes, gave hugs and thanked them all for a great
time before heading off in the opposite direction to the subway station.
When I got on the subway I ended up
sitting next to an elderly woman who commented on how nice it was to see
someone smiling so brightly in the morning. I smiled a bit wider and shared
with her why I was smiling so much. We began to talk about friends, then, and
something she said to me walked into my mind and started swaying to a melody I
couldn’t stop hearing.
She was seventy-six years old and was
returning to the city from visiting some of her best girlfriends who had moved
away. They weren’t celebrating a birthday, but rather a death. One of the girls
had recently passed away and to honor her memory they decided to get together
for a girlfriend’s weekend. As she spoke of the years their lives had
intertwined I was completely absorbed in the beauty of what she was saying.
They’d been childhood friends and had grown up together sharing in the joys and
sorrows of life over the years. They’d vacationed together with their
respective families (never anything too fancy, mostly camping), and traveled to
each other’s current cities to attend graduations, weddings, grandchild
baptisms, and other big life events. One thing they had always wanted to do was
to take a cruise together. Not just a week-long cruise or even a 21-day cruise,
but to get on a ship and travel all the way around the world together. Now,
though, her friend had passed away and the opportunity to ever do something like
that would never be possible again. “Now,” she said, “I would give anything to
have Phyllis back with us so we could take even that three week cruise of the Mediterranean
that had started us all dreaming all those years ago. I’d give anything to have
that chance. Life is just too short.”
I began to embrace the idea of a
trip like that with my girlfriends. A trip when we were all still young and
single and had every opportunity to take on that famous tag line, “Just do it!”
When I got to work I jumped into my
tasks, but in the back of my mind was a part of a song I remembered my Mom
singing when we’d drive over the bridge in my hometown and see the sailboats on
the water. “Come sail away. Come sail away. Come sail away with me.” Pretty
soon I was humming it as I crunched numbers, and by lunch time I was in full “I
want to go on a cruise” mode. So I did what any good number cruncher would do. I Googled “21-day cruises.” One of the movies we had watched the night
before was “Roman Holiday” with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. We had all
exclaimed over how great it would be to take a holiday to Rome, so of course
the Mediterranean was our pick. I found a great deal…and the deal was done!
At dinner that night I dropped the big
question. I shared about Florence on the subway and the tears in her eyes as
she shared her story with me. I told them all how much they meant to me and
that I didn’t want to get to the place when we would have another slumber party
to honor the life of one of them (or of me) only to regret not having taken
that one big trip.
They may think I’m crazy asking
them to take a cruise with me, but it didn’t take long for each of them to pull
out their smartphones and look at the site with me.
We’ll be pulling out of port in T
minus 60 days.
No comments:
Post a Comment