An Ill-fated Family Vacation

For what I hope is your reading pleasure, I'm posting a little piece I wrote a few years ago about a family vacation gone wrong. People seemed to enjoy it.


My Trip to Alaska
By
Charles Geilich
©2002
(With Some Artistic License, But Not Much)

Day One: We get up early in Dallas to await the van, driven by Scott, to take us to the airport. We’re tired, a bit disorganized, but there is an excitement in the air. We have a along journey ahead of us, but it’s okay, because we’re going to Alaska! Scott arrives with Mary’s parents, Joe and Nell, already in the van, dawn breaks, and by candlelight we pack the horses and head for DFW Airport. Approximately at this time, seen in retrospect, a microscopic virus has been inhaled by my daughter, Catherine, and is nestling into her intestines for its own long journey.

Still Day One: After flying around the world, we arrive in beautiful Seattle, Washington, home to Seahawks, Mariners, and caffeine addicts. Catherine, the non-sleeping baby, has not slept on the plane, even as we flew the breadth of Russia.. Jack and Juliet are beginning to get a bit surly, and Joe has commented, to all passengers, about the color of the airplane (and the color of airplanes in general), the temperature, how both “Alaska” and “Alabama” are states with three “As” in their names, and different ways one can burp, even demonstrating a few. He is not satisfied with the airplane meal(s) he is given. Nell keeps smiling. I’m getting restless, as is, in retrospect, Catherine’s virus. More on that later.

Still Day One: At the Seattle airport, Mary and I get into a fistfight at the baggage claim area. The line to collect bags is ten deep, and Mary suggests that I claw my way to the front and hurl our 150-pound suitcases singly behind me as they crawl past on the conveyor belt. I demure; thus, our brawl. Seattle has 37 different airlines flying into its airport. Interestingly, every flight is numbered 1141 and they all get in at 1:22 p.m. They all use the same conveyor belt. As the travelers in front of me faint or die, I make my way to the front and collect our bags, which are able to fit onto a small armored personnel carrier brought in for the task. Well, most of them. A few camels, provided by the cruise line, await us for the trek to the ship, 123 miles away. We’re almost there now! Catherine’s virus, in retrospect, is almost hatching within her.

Still Day One: We’re on the ship! For six (or maybe 60) days, the eight of us will share quarters. That is “quarters,” not wholes. Actually, the rooms, for a ship, are quite spacious, but at no time is one far enough away from anyone else to miss the sounds of teeth gnashing or hair growing. Still, we’re together as a family, and we set sail. I wonder if those dark clouds on the horizon mean anything?

Still Day One: They do. As the captain later said when he staggered from cabin to cabin, warning everyone to get down and cover our heads, it turns out that movie about the perfect storm was getting a sequel: the Even More Perfect Storm. Remember the beginning of Gilligan’s Island? We were the S.S. Minnow, but our trip was a little rougher. We had already gone to bed when we noticed the ceiling below our feet, and I flicked my hand out in time to catch Catherine as she glided past like Toto during the Wizard of Oz tornado. As the night proceeded, our traveling party became sick, one by one, as the ship crested each wave, on the perpendicular, then settled again with a thunderous smack into the resulting trough, over and over and over. With time, one could identify a particular retching sound with a particular relative, or crew member. Catherine threw up, too, but the virus, in retrospect, held on.

Day Two: At sea. No land, no hope. Seas still rough. Ill. Trips to the infirmary, where the doctor himself was just being zipped into a body bag upon our first arrival. Not good. Suppositories to stop the nausea. Not good. Best not to breathe. Idea of arriving in Juneau tantalizing. Was that an iceberg? Even poor Catherine retching, looking confused, wondering why her parents hate her so much. Seasick? Or something else?

Day Three: Awaken to quiet, still waters, pulling into Juneau. Is that you, God? Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yes, it’s raining and cold in Juneau, but it’s still land. None of us can stand easily, much less walk, but we must escape the ship, even for a little while. We can’t wait for the gangplank to be lowered, we jump overboard. I drop the children down to Mary on shore before I hurl myself over the railing. Juneau is cold, damp, ugly, and the most welcome sight I’ve ever seen. I kiss the slushy ground. We arrange a tour of Mendenhall Glacier, but just before we start off, the rain increases in volume, and I realize it would not be a good idea to keep Catherine out in it. So I pack my family off on their dogsleds with some pemican and whale meat for their trip to the glacier, and I take Catherine back aboard the ship, which is roomier now that so many of the passengers and crew were lost at sea on the way up.

Still Day Three: Catherine and I play peacefully in the cabin for an hour or so, and I ask her, “Hey, sweetie, now that we’re feeling better, would you like to go up to the Lido deck and get something to eat? What do you say, little girl?” Catherine gave me a beatific smile and then, and this really happened, emptied the contents of her stomach, intestines, liver, spleen and, I believe, her kidneys, in an arc that, thankfully, passed over my head and hit the wall five feet behind me, leaving a small dent before gravity slowly pulled it all, well, most of it, to the floor. Then she did it again. And again. It seemed to surprise her each time as much as me. In all, she threw up twice her body weight in one hour. The Virus had arrived.

Day Four: Mary became ill as The Virus took up residence in her, first entering through her eyeballs, we think. She prayed for death. I caught her in the bathroom with a pistol, trying to insert bullets. I would later come to regret throwing it overboard when I became ill. Mary, Catherine, and I lay in bed, our skin sagging about us, as the ship set sail for a town that is either called Sitka or Sick-a, I couldn’t really hear. The others pitied us and were glad it wasn’t them.

Day Five: The Virus took the rest of our party. As Mary, Catherine, and I found the strength to move our eyelids, Juliet, Jack, and Nell succumbed to the demon bug one at a time, their torment perhaps made worse because of their knowledge of what lay ahead. Meanwhile, I found the strength to go the ship’s casino, where I lost our family’s savings at a machine labeled “Win!Win!Win!” I knew it didn’t matter, because none of us would make it out of this alive, anyway. By the way, the only members of our party who did not become ill were Joe and Jennifer, the children’s cousin from California. By not eating, and by breathing only shallowly, they cleverly managed to fall into comas early on, thus achieving a sort of suspended animation that saved them much grief.

Day Six: This Voyage of the Damned crossed the River Styx and tied up at Ketchikan, which is, I believe, the home of Ketchup (not catsup). Local authorities left food for us on a dingy but wouldn’t let us off the ship for fear of the plague. All in all, they were very kind.

Day Thirty-Five: Almost over. We reach Victoria, British Columbia, and, finally, all is well. Those of us who are still ambulatory leave the ship for our allotted time in Victoria, the nicest port on the tour. The fifteen minutes passed quickly. Having lost all our money at the casino, we traded our clothes and some fixtures pried loose from the ship for food and drink. We really liked Victoria.

Day Fifty-Five: Praise Poseidon, we reach Seattle again. And the sun is even shining. Truly, this is rebirth. Natives, having heard of our plight, greet us on shore with warm blankets and paper cups (with cardboard sleeves) of Starbucks coffee. They give each of us a free laptop and take us to the airport. We love them.

Day Seventy: We reach DFW Airport, home again. Our 15-month-old child can now fit into her 6-month outfits again, and poor Jack has lost his teeth to the scurvy, but by damn, we’re home. If Juliet will take in some washing from the neighbors and Mary and I can share one hospital bed while we recover, we think we can horde enough money to save our house from foreclosure and get Joe and Jennifer revived. And we can’t wait until our next family vacation.


The End

(Well, this is how I remember it)