Boxfans and Boats

Years ago, when a friend of ours was moving from Boston to Florida (you know who you are!), she became obsessed with cleaning her box fans. Instead of packing, arranging for a mover, seeing friends, she spent a day disassembling these fans and cleaning the dust of their blades and grills. You see, a big move is a life-altering event which often feels out of our control. We leave what we know, and take a dive into the unfamiliar and the uncertain. Why face the challenges brought up by such a frightening prospect? It's much more rewarding to take on a discrete problem, one that can be solved in an afternoon with some diligence and elbow grease. It's much more satisfying to clean the box fans than to face the unknown.

Going on S@S is something akin to this, it seems. The last few days, Zoë and I have been waking up with a distinct "Oh my God! What have we gotten ourselves into?!" panic. We'd never seen the ship, nor did we have any real idea what this would be like. The Kid and I are box fan cleaners. My "To Do" list below could in fact be thought of precisely as the list of box fans I have been cleaning for the past six weeks. The Kid, too, has had his share of figurative box fan cleaning. Today, after my mother dropped us off at the airport, he became obsessed with the fact that he did not know the proper order in which to view his new DVD's of superhero cartoons. There we were, at the gate, waiting for a plane that would take us away for a summer-long trip, and he was almost in tears from the fear that the various episodes of X-Men cartoons he had watched in the car had been viewed out of sequence. Luckily, Uncle Fred, comic book enthusiast, was answering his cell phone, and was sitting in front of his computer. He looked it up online, and quickly settled the matter. The Kid was immediately transformed, back to his smiley, cheerful self.

You see, cleaning box fans works. As soon as they are cleaned, order is restored, a sense of authority and control is regained.

Or, that scary unknown can become real in exciting ways. For example, you can arrive in San Diego and realize that the hotel you're staying in is right across the street from the ship you will be boarding the next day. I saw it from the air, in fact, as the plane descended into airport, giving us a clear view of San Diego's harbor area. Or, rather, I thought I'd seen it from the plane. The ship I saw looked like the one in the picture, but it was too big, too fancy looking . . . .that couldn't be it. That same ship began to loom large as the hotel shuttle approached the place where we were staying. "No, that can't be it," Zoë said, "that's some big fancy cruise ship." Well, it was it. I am typing this not more than a few hundred yards from the MV Explorer, docked right across the street from us. The picture above is from tonight.

There is no anxiety in the room, no panic. After a thrilling visit to the ship (as close as we could get to it), the Kid is sound asleep, and Zoë and I are ready to turn in. No one is obsessing about box fans anymore.