Memory, Week 1

I remember thinking, "Damn, this place is going to be so crowded" as we pulled into sight of the Nassau port. Already moored were five cruise ships and we made number six. The Carnival Imagination tilted only slightly as the captain turned the ship out toward open ocean; apparently, ships large enough to contain a casino, putt-putt golf course, a pool, a water park, and god knows how many staterooms need a lot of room to turn around. This was all Hurricane Rina's fault. She had made places like Cozumel, Mexico undesirable locations in October of 2011, so every cruise line was redirecting their ships here.
It took me a while to understand why we were headed back out to open seas; "Did the captain change his mind?" I asked my new husband, Chip. "No, they're going to tug us in," he said. We made our way to the aft end of the ship, which I had come to affectionately call the "ass" end after mishearing what Chip had said the first time, and sure enough, a comparatively small boat was being attached to the ass end of our boat by tug lines that, from our height, looked like they'd snap if they tried to move this heavy lady. The lines pulled taught and as I watched the tug boat pull against the weight, I couldn't help but think "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can." I didn't even notice that we were moving at first, the movement was too imperceptible to feel through the eleven stories of our ship, but then I noticed the slight whitening of the water at the edges of the ship's base.
I can only imagine how impossible and, okay, silly our huge cruise liner looked being backed into its parking space, nor do I even remotely pretend to understand how the little tug boat moved the huge ship, but as we disembarked and I saw the true breadth of the lines holding the boat in place, at least as big around as my new husband and then some, I realized, perspective is everything.