Healing Through Travel, Mending With Music --second publication

Minutes before I left for my sister's wake, the mailman delivered a copy of my first published story, carried in The Long Islander News.  The article I'd written profiled Cajun band BeauSoleil.  I stood holding the newspaper contemplating whether I should bring it with me to show my parents, but nothing would assuage their grief, so I left it with the circulars and unopened condolence cards.

Two and a half years later, I still hadn't brought myself fully through all five stages of grief.  Although I'd found a degree of acceptance, I knew I still had a couple issues to address before I could put her memory to rest.  Those issues were part of the baggage I carried onto the ship as I embarked on my first cruise in the summer of 2005. 

There were a lot of reasons 1200 people signed up for this chartered cruise.  The prestige of being on board with Garrison Keillor ranked as the number one draw.  But there were some who ventured aboard because of a Cajun band who likes to play their authentic music and have a good time.

 This cruise to the southeastern coast of Canada aboard Holland America's liner, Maasdam included writing workshops, Prairie Home Companion shows, and Garrison's monologues, which certainly sounded enticing.  What finally piqued my desire beyond all self-restraint was the addition of BeauSoleil, who is to me the ultimate in Cajun bands.  As a roots-music aficionada, with heated longing for all things Cajun, I could no longer resist the upcoming APHC cruise.  It set me back a few thousand dollars, but in the end it gave me closure to a long-opened chapter of grief.

 Journey's Prelude

 I hadn't always been this obsessed with Cajun music.  It began with a very narrow focus on BeauSoleil.  Early in 2003, I had been frantically casting about for something powerful enough to distract my mind, give me a few minutes relief from the emotional ache of watching my sister die from cancer.  I tried listening to Prairie Home Companion shows on its web page archives.  Though I live in Minnesota, I'd never listened to that Minnesota icon. The show I first heard included BeauSoleil as musical guests.

The moment I heard Michael Doucet, founder of the band as well as fiddler and lead vocalist, sing The Mardi Gras Song, I was transported. The words:  Capitaine, Capitaine, voyage ton flag/ Allons se mettre dessus le chemin refused to leave my head.   France was a destination for which my sister had always longed.  She'd studied French in school.  Because of her impending death, a trip was another of her dashed dreams and I grieved this loss with her.  The idea that she would have many aspirations left unmet bothered me greatly.  I longed to some day take a trip abroad on her behalf, to hold up her memory saying, "This is for you, my dear."

When Garrison introduced BeauSoleil that January evening, I hadn't been paying attention, all I heard was singing in French.  I thought the musicians were from France. Upon hearing Michael sing in a foreign language, I created a utopia.  I couldn't understand what he was saying, but it sounded alluring.  I romanticized it to include my sister, healthy and vibrant, touring the French Alps, walking through the streets of Avignon, standing under the Eiffel Tower as I took her picture.  I futilely wished for my reverie to become her reality.

Over time, I learned the members of BeauSoleil aren't from France.  Their ancestors are French descendents ousted from Nova Scotia, now living in Louisiana as they have for over two and a half centuries.  And in time, the raw wound of grief began to heal.  I've also stopped chastising myself for my fanatical fixation on BeauSoleil. 

Music therapist, Dawn Miller, who deals with end-of-life issues in a local hospice, put it into perspective when she described music as a transitional object.  " I know sometimes people will latch onto songs, you might call them a transitional object, where someone is going through an emotional crisis and they'll find that one certain song and they'll play that song ten times a day. What a healthy thing for them to latch onto and to get them through grief."

Poetry was also instrumental as I worked through my heartache.  I wrote dozens of poems during my sister's decline and death.  One poem in particular described a finally realized journey and begged to be read aloud on the ship, if only for myself.

 Embarkation

 While BeauSoleil's music has become my security blanket that I carry around with me, it's also a surefire tactic to bring me to my feet and dancing.  With the heady hope of spending an entire week dancing to live Cajun music every night, I board the Maasdam on August 20th. 

Like that first day of college stepping into one's dormitory, I walk across the gangway to the ship, lugging gym bag, laptop, and overstuffed purse. So far everyone I see is a stranger.  Stowing my grips in my cabin, excitement overcomes me and I trot around the perimeter of the decks. 

No matter how many lakes Minnesota claims, none, not even Lake Mille Lacs, which runs up to 20 miles long, stuns me, as does the grandeur of the ocean.  I hike up to the top deck and stare out at the Boston harbor.  I notice someone who looks very familiar and angle over to greet him.

"Aren't you Al Tharp," I ask.

"You know, people tell me that all the time, " he replies.

"Well that's because you are Al Tharp!" I laughingly protest.

Sheepishly, Al, who plays bass for BeauSoleil, turns to me and we shake hands.  I've met all the band members on other occasions, but the thrill of the encounters has pretty much been one-sided. 

Next I check out the interior of the ship.  Deck 8 holds the casino with a lavish cocktail lounge in the center.  Bellied up to the bar sits Michael Doucet, waiting for a bucket of ice.  I'm not the only fan to notice him.  A folk-dancer from Maryland gives Michael a warm hug. 

                                            I step up to congratulate him on receiving the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts.  Michael's soft-as-butter handshake surprises me.  His

hands create some of the most powerful fiddle music I've ever heard and I expected an impressive grip as well.  Then again, a vice-like paw probably wouldn't be able to maneuver the nylon-core fiddle strings, which emit the honeyed tunes that Michael plays on his Jonathan Cooper violin.

I float back to my cabin, hoping to meet my mysterious roommate.  Ann and I had connected via a chat room for solo travelers looking for cabin mates.  Ann, a New Englander, seemed perfect for me.  She was traveling alone for the first time after her husband's unexpected passing.  Her motivation for taking the cruise matched mine, which pleased me greatly.  We'd passed a few e-mails back and forth and swapped a couple logistical phone calls, but I didn't know much about the person with whom I'd be spending the next week.   

Following our initial how-do-you-do, neither one of us could have been more pleased.  Without delay I tell Ann about meeting Michael and Al while walking around the ship.  Ann looks at me with star-struck eyes and wonders how long we'll have to wait to hear the Cajun band perform.  We don't discuss personal habits, "do you sleep late?"  "do you snore?" "will my singing in the shower bother you?", but launch right into our reason for splurging on this cruise. 

A few nights later, Ann and I sit up late into the night talking about the appeal of Cajun music.  Her words hit me like a déjà vu.  After her husband's death from a brain aneurysm, which happened on the same day their youngest daughter graduated from college, Ann floundered in a sea of grief.  "I didn't know what zydeco or Cajun music was until a friend took me to a dance. That was the first thing that made me feel happy again; I became a zydecoholic," Ann says into the low light of our cabin. 

My attempt to alleviate sorrow followed a similar route to Ann's?we've kept our heads above grief's waters by tying our spirits to the life buoys of Louisianan music.   We marvel at the amazing chance that we'd randomly hooked up as cabin mates.  A pair of tearful, but smiling kindred souls says good night across the darkness that evening. 

 I love to travel, but the concept creates a yin-yang dichotomy for me.  I convince myself that by learning about other cultures, I am able to extend a hand in friendship thereby affirming travel as intrinsically good.  Then my mind immediately deplores the elitism of travel, rendering the activity bad.

Mainstream international travel often utilizes the raw hands of indigenous peoples who are in more immediate need of a paycheck than international peace as they scour resort toilets and fold 250-thread count cotton sheets.  Because of my concern over the exploitation of service personnel in the travel industry, I'm not attracted to typical sightseeing touristy trips in developing countries.  I'd much rather get to know people without any perceived hierarchy of power between us. 

Despite my lofty ideals, I find myself luxuriating in the attention of a room steward who changes my sheets, scrubs my bathroom and vacuums my floor.  When I have a chance to talk to the steward assigned to my cabin, he tells me his family lives in the Philippines. 

I can't seem to discover more about him because he's rushing off, carting dirty linen down the narrow hall or carrying fluffy towels into someone's bath.  He always has a smile for me as he greets me by name.  I think Paulo is sincere when he shouts down the hall, "Have a good day, Miss Susan!"  Just as endearing are the hand towels, folded into lobsters and dolphins, reminiscent of paper origami that Paulo tucks into our cabin each evening.  He's like gravity, I never see him at work in my room, but I know he's around.

The cruise docks at four ports and I take in every one.  After our first port in Bar Harbor, Maine, we sail east on the Atlantic into international waters, all the way around the tip of Nova Scotia, which is the second smallest province in Canada.  We dock at Prince Edward Island.

Charlottetown spills over with Anne of Green Gables paraphernalia.  I visit the farm upon which the fictional story is based.  Anne Shirley, the story's protagonist, grew up at Green Gables.  While there, I take a walk through the haunted forest, laboriously read all the signage, first in French, which I know only rudimentarily, and then in English and spend a few dollars on a cloth bag emblazoned with the words, "Prince Edward Island."

Late that morning our bus bumps over the hills to a gift shop complete with a kilt-wearing Scotsman.  We sample the homemade island jams before moving out past Charlottetown to the nearby town of Cavendish.  Our guide points out the sights and we have the opportunity to clomp along the sea's boardwalk. 

Rough, red rocks take a beating from the ocean's tide.  A woman's headscarf catches the gusts, looking like a collegiate pennant, as it stands straight out from her head.  As I gaze out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, my mind waxes philosophical.  I reflect on the pastor's words from a couple days prior at an impromptu shipside worship service, "remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return," then scrape up some ochre dirt to dryly sift between my fingers.  I dare to climb down closer to the water, where the dampened rock is slippery.  A fellow cruiser hollers out a caution, but I find the spray irresistible as it wets my face and curls my hair. 

Looking up, I see the pastor from Sunday's service standing against the wind.  His sermon, though short and blithe, had touched on the idea of our beings returning to dust, but when I look out at the water, I feel certain that we were once all souls in the sea and that one day, we will collectively return to it.  Mentioning this idea to him, he smiles and nods his head, conceding that I just might have a point worth considering. We linger over the ideas of water as an essential element and how it fits into the origin of humans.  I'm now sodden in salty mist and scramble back up the rocks to the bus.

That afternoon I walk down Richmond Street, past Connaught Square, to gingerly step on the rocky shores of Charlottetown.  With Hillsborough River flowing at my feet, I compose a poem in response to a writing workshop I attended the day before on board the ship.

Sharon Arms Doucet is a published author.  I've read some of her books.  I'm drafting one of my own in the same fashion as "Fiddle Fever," a book Sharon wrote, loosely based on Creole musician, Canray Fontenot.  My story is set at the other end of the Mississippi, in northern Minnesota, sprinkled with Swedish, not Cajun-French, words. 

Sitting in the ship's library, waiting for Sharon's writing workshop to begin, I feel adrenaline start to flow to my brain.  Day after day I spend doing exactly as I want on my ocean vacation.  I reflect on the fact that I haven't raised my voice to anyone.  I haven't experienced one moment of frustration.  For a mom of four young children, a steadily serene heart is pretty unusual.  And in a few minutes, I would be engaged in my avocation, trying to transform my writing into a real vocation.

Sharon begins her workshop with the caveat, "We all have a creative spirit; the sin is having a talent in life and not honing it, whether you share it or not."  Precisely what I want to hear.  My fingers fly over my laptop as she leads us in a Zen-like writing exercise that culminates for me in a wacky short-short about a boy who finds his wayward pet parrot, Kerfuffle, living in a cave at the bottom of the sea. 

Energized by new writing, I pull together a poetry reading.  Several passengers participate and we read our work aloud to a very small audience in the library one evening.  My heart thumps as I recite my treasured verse written long ago in the midst of grief, "You were not ready when you flew from earth, snatched like a bird in a storm?"

The excursion that genuinely takes me by surprise also takes me underground in a defunct coalmine the next day.  Sheldon McNeil, a retired miner, guides our group of a dozen people through the shafts at the Miners' Museum in Cape Breton.  Our bones chill in the clammy air and we crouch as the corridor tapers until we must contort our bodies to fit through four-foot high passages.  Sheldon's body is short and compact.  He walks through the tunnels with a slouched spine, tilted head, and ear perched on his shoulder, perfected after decades as a collier.

He tells us how he first went down into the mines as a youth to support his family, as his brothers had done.  Sheldon's mining days started before sunrise.  He points to the stalls where ponies stood that were used to haul the coal boxes, the cage the boys would climb into as they were lowered to their posts where they worked as trapper boys.  These trapper boys, as young as eight year old, would be stationed at underground doors, to open and close them when boxes passed through, thus controlling air current.  A miner's life seems so dark, yet Sheldon speaks fondly of the camaraderie and support he encountered while underground.  His face still glows with the brightness of those memories.

Cape Breton's countryside spins out into green stretches of rolling hills.  The few areas that I visit are abundantly clean and spare of tall buildings.  I meet a woman vacationing from Quebec who, after providing me with a requested quick French lesson, invites me up to her city. 

While in Halifax, our last port, I wait in front of the public library on Spring Garden Road to meet one of my cyber-friends. Susanna and I catch up on all the news about our children while drinking coffee at Timothee's.  Walking back to the ship, a street musician fiddling a vigorous Celtic number answers my numerous questions about where he learned to play and how he plays double-stops and drones, then demonstrates how fast his fingers move over the fingerboard.  I'm now positive that fiddlers go to a secret fiddle school where they ingest enchanted finger-dexterity potions endowing them with magical skills. That afternoon, I kayak along the sea's coast.

 Coda

Saturday morning comes early for me.  Running on about three hours of sleep, I stand in Logan International airport, waiting for my check-in gate to open for business.  I wander over to a nearby Starbucks.  The two customers in line ahead of me look nearly as pleased to see me as I am smiling to see them.  I try unsuccessfully to strike a dégagé pose, mildly chagrined that even after spending a week in their presence, I'm still smitten by their company. 

The Doucet brothers each order a cup of coffee and we chat about their upcoming visit to St. Paul where they'll play for A Prairie Home Companion's season opener.  Michael comments that there'll be a street dance after the show.  "You'll have to get your husband out there to dance with you," he says, smiling, froth from his cappuccino clinging to his white moustache.  Then they walk to another terminal booked for Bangor, Maine to play in a festival the next day.   For them, it's just another gig, but their Cajun music might be perfect salve to another troubled soul.

word count 3000