Returning Home

As another trip reaches the finish line I become despondent yet eager, energetic yet lethargic. Some psychiatrist or other might want to ask me questions about my childhood or the relationship that I have with my mother but believe me my feelings are perfectly normal and are of no immediate concern for those who make a profit from asking "and how do you feel about that'.

After two months onboard it is yet again that time to pack my bags and shift gear. On the immediate horizon looms my other life, the one that never encroaches or disturbs the current one yet it is at the end of the day the more important and the base reason for being at sea - to earn money to keep the other ticking over. Two lives, that on ship and that back home, yet neither can be part of the other. For example, when I typically arrive back home the first thing that I do is to try and recognize my wife at the airport and hope that my son might not run away in fear of the stranger. The second thing that I do is to unpack the suitcase in an attempt to integrate myself back into home life as quickly as possible and I leave that suitcase hidden until the very last possible moment. That moment usually being; that if I don't pack within the next five minutes then I will miss my flight!

The opposite effect happens when I have departed home for the sea! Usually I lug that suitcase onboard my new vessel with the ever unfulfilled hope that some kind seaman might help me and that the ship is actually alongside in port instead of at sea (without the seemingly obligatory helicopter journey or crew boat to get to). When onboard it might be days, nay weeks before the suitcase finally gets emptied and stowed and it actually looks like I am living onboard and not in preparation for immediate departure! The actual time span between unpacking and packing being non-existent!

Despite the emotional problems of suitcases, the packing and unpacking of therein, and to get back to the subject that the heading of this article refers to ..yep, it is now time to pack my bags and scoot off home to my family. But just as a little sideline: In times gone by when 'men of steel sailed ships of wood' were due to return home after mapping the world they might have had cause to wonder if the wife was still waiting as eagerly as when they had first departed the golden shores of home! Give or take a couple of years it is quite possible that the Mrs., the fiances and nowadays the boyfriends might have fallen into alternative dreams, idols or ideas and so those joyfully returning home might not find the expected, rather the unexpected! It is though quite obvious (in these modern times) to the layman that after a very short two months at sea life back home should not have taken any disastrous turn, the time span being too short for the milkman to milk or the postman to post! I for one am not particularly worried on that score and have great confidence in the fact that my wife has been far too busy attending to our rather over-active one year old son to have had time for any extra curriculum activities!

When leaving a ship for home there are though matters to mull over, not quite in the category of divorce layers and child custody but things that affect the way one has been thinking for the last few months. I am finishing on the boat! I am busy wrapping up two months of work and integration with others onboard and I have to get everything in order so that the new Chief Engineer who is coming to relieve me will not be put out for anything untoward! I am busy writing handover notes on everything and anything that has happened and occurred during my tenure onboard. I am also trying to wrap up and finish off all the little jobs that I warded off from lack of interest and those I had placed in the 'leave till the last moment basket'! Other things like reports to write on my engineers, stores orders that have to be finalized and maintenance reports that have to be translated from unintelligible garbage into English will all keep me busy until I see my relief walk up the gangway (getting out of a helicopter, transfer basket or the turret of a submarine).

When my relief finally gets onboard and when I have expelled in one breathless heap all that I have to tell him, and only then will I be ready for that other life! And it is that other life that I am busy thinking about as I write these reports and attend to the preparations for departing this fine vessel. To give an actual time or date when the mind starts to drift away from purely shipboard matters is impossible to give! On this vessel we have spent far too long in port waiting for a charter, waiting for action so maybe my mind started to turn to home earlier than normal! On other vessels were we have been working 36/7 with no time for self-analysis my mind never really adjusted to going home to my other life until I was sipping Tiger Beer at Singapore airport (or Budweiser at Kennedy airport if you so wish)!

It goes without saying that a certain period exists back home when opposing thought processes are activated! When it is time to depart home to return to the sea, many goodbyes have to made, feelings shed and promises fortified in rivers of tears! These typically start a week before the plane takes off the ground! And again the mind has to make an attempt to close one life out in preparation for a new one. In some marginal way though it is seemingly easier to slot back into a life at sea than it is to return to home life despite the fact that the life back home is the preferred one by a long shot! A psychiatrist might come up with some nonsense about being repressed or something or other but I prefer to look at it like this: When on a ship feelings, attitudes and sharing are all at a minimum, conversations onboard revolve around work, woman and wine and for the most part skirt around or gloss over any emotional or deep conversations about how one feels. It is a fact that most seafarers withdraw into themselves and typically erect a brick wall around them as protection. And then suddenly they are back home and are discussing relationships, guests for dinner parties and why the cat keeps on peeing on the sitting room carpet. At home there is no place for a wall of protection and so it has to be dismantled, placed inside of the suitcase and hidden until the next time a gangway is walked up. It is far easier to erect this wall than it is to take down!

Regardless, it is that time and I am more than ready to tear down the restrictions that the wall has given. I am more than ready to open up my heart once again and let the outside world in, yet it takes some preparation to do so. I am ready to live that other life as two months on a ship is more than enough and I am ready to cast off the person that I am when on a ship to become that person that I am when on land!

And so I am ready, all I need now is my relief, a plane ticket and a taxi!