Ever since she could
speak – or so it seems – my daughter Clare has asked to go on a cruise. My
husband, Jeff, would rather stick a fork in his eye than subject himself to
being “trapped on a floating hotel with two thousand drunk strangers.” Me, I
don’t mind the floating hotel part, but the frat party atmosphere I imagined as
being fundamental to a cruise was something I outgrew in my 20s…when I could
often be found at the center of many a chugging contest.
This past February, with
Clare’s 13th birthday looming and the pressure mounting to top her
previous birthday celebration (think: stretch limo filled with girls in “Disney
Princess Reject” costumes laughing and screaming and singing their way around
Boulder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBtPKpP8_mc),
I stumbled upon 300,000 credit card reward points I didn’t know I had.
Helllloooo, Carnival Cruise Lines and Happy Birthday, Clare!
Within hours, I
had booked flights to Los Angeles, a cruise to Mexico, even paid the standard
gratuities – all with points. Clare and I left last Monday – coincidentally
Jeff’s birthday; I told him his birthday gift was that he didn’t have to go with us.
Helllloooo, Carnival Cruise Lines and Happy Birthday, Clare!
 |
| Floating Hotel, here we come! |
To my surprise, I
discovered that while, yes, half the boat seemed to be liquored up before
departure, the other half were Mormons, able to balance out the more
alcohol-prone passengers. Clare and I were assigned to a dinner table with six people:
four girls who had recently graduated from high school and two moms, all of
them Mormon.
While I quickly learned that our religious beliefs were quite different, I peppered each of them with questions to discover something we might have in common, a connection of some sort. Why? Because I truly believe that if we dig deep enough we can find some overlapping experience, belief, desire, or value with anyone, regardless of our obvious differences.
While I quickly learned that our religious beliefs were quite different, I peppered each of them with questions to discover something we might have in common, a connection of some sort. Why? Because I truly believe that if we dig deep enough we can find some overlapping experience, belief, desire, or value with anyone, regardless of our obvious differences.
One of the moms,
Heather, asked me what I did for a living and, well, you know where this
conversation went: the life-saving impact of volunteer blood donors.
Immediately, one of the young women’s eyes lit up, and while her friends’
expressions reflected their distaste for needles, Stacy told me that she had
recently made her very first blood donation. I asked her how old she was. “Seventeen,”
she said. I told her that I got to meet a group of my actual blood donors once
and that one of them was also only seventeen when she had decided to participate
in her high school’s blood drive and her blood then made its way to my bedside
in the ICU. I told her how each one of my blood donors had made it possible for
me to hang out longer on earth, even to be on this cruise with my daughter. I
told her that without every single one of those pints of blood I received, the
adorable kid sitting next to me (yes, Clare blushed) would be growing up
without a mom.
At that point, Stacy seemed
to understand that by sharing the story of how I got to personally thank some
of my blood donors I was actually
thanking her on behalf of her blood
recipient. And she got it. Sure, it was only an hour of her time, and sure, a
lot of kids had done it. But now she seemed to understand how amazing and
generous her gift of blood had been. She might have even understood that a
connection – if only in spirit – is forged with every pint of blood that
someone chooses to donate anonymously. The way I see it, all those patients in
need of blood transfusions are really just “friends we’ve never met.” And who
wouldn’t want to help a friend?
No matter our politics,
religion, socio-economic status, age, musical tastes, or whether we prefer our
Philly cheesesteaks “wit Whiz” or “widdout,” blood – both the giving and the
receiving of it – is one of the most universal connections we will ever experience in life. How cool is that?
 |
| Blood-red Virgin Daiquiris and Stephen King--For the Non-Mormon, Non-Drunk Passengers |
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