I Should Be on a Cruise Right Now

In the pre-pandemic days, I had planned a Viking River Cruise with my siblings and our spouses. The longboat was scheduled to leave Amsterdam yesterday, May 12. That did not happen—the cruise was cancelled, and we are all hunkered down in our respective homes. A long way from Amsterdam.

We started planning this cruise about a year ago, though my husband and I did not commit until we moved into our new house. But shortly after our move, I made the down payment, and I began looking forward to it.

As a consummate planner, I checked out several travel guides from the library earlier this year. I started reading up on the various places our trip would take us—Cologne, Nuremberg, Vienna, Budapest, Prague. I compared Rick Steves’s recommendations with the excursions available through Viking, and worked out what we should do each day along the way.

Then the pandemic hit.

Our library closed, and I could not return the travel guides. They still sit on my bedside table, constant reminders of what might have been. Just recently, our library announced it would reopen its book depositories, so now I must remove the Post-Its I used to mark our cruise stops and prepare the books to return to the library. Each time I take out a Post-It, I’ll feel the disappointment of canceling the trip again—another reminder of what might have been.

There are days when I am depressed being stuck at home, and other days when I accept our confinement as the healthiest course of action for myself, my husband, and society generally.

All in all, I know I have had it easy. I rarely have anywhere I have to go. Medical and dental appointments have all been delayed (though they are now rescheduled for the weeks ahead). My hair is straight, and a couple more inches of growth won’t hurt it. All I really need to do is make an occasional trip to the grocery store or drugstore. Everything else I can order online. (I could order food and pharmaceuticals online also, and occasionally I do. But I prefer the surety of knowing what I will be eating, rather than relying on a stranger’s substitutions.)

My work is home-based anyway. There is very little in a writing life I can’t do from home. My critique group switched to online editing with barely a hiccup. After all, we have a long-distance member and are used to critiquing his submissions that way.

I miss my in-person critique groups, going to church services, random trips to the library or coffee shop, and going out to eat. But I can cope without those activities.

Still, I wish I’d been in Amsterdam yesterday.

And I wish I had another journey to look forward to in the future, just as I have anticipated this cruise for so many months. That might be the greatest loss—abandoning our expectations of family togetherness. More than a hope, the cruise was a concrete plan to create shared experiences and future memories. Our plan is dashed, not yet replaced by any other.

But when will I feel safe going anywhere again? When will I want to get in a plane? Or even drive far enough to need a public restroom along the way? The pandemic constrained our lives so suddenly. It changed our sense of appropriate social interactions almost overnight. I doubt we rebound as quickly as we shut down.

And so, for now, it is better to put aside planning and take life a day at a time. First, a haircut. Then, an overnight trip to nearby relatives. And maybe someday, I’ll book another cruise.

What plans have you had to change because of the pandemic?