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Passing in the Night - Travel Memoir

Helen Cross

My father is a ghost. A faded photograph. A trinket from a faraway land. A laugh that

emanates from the depths of my stomach to the curve of my cheeks. A family

heirloom.


When Dad was at sea, Mum would listen to the shipping forecast.


Moderate or rough, becoming slight or moderate.


The soothing words and rhythm felt like a lullaby.


Good, occasionally moderate.


But the ocean itself was a stranger. Always out of reach and moving further away.


Veering slowly, losing identity.


Dad died in the summer before I started Primary School and ever since we have

seemed to drift further apart. Maybe it was inevitable that I would feel my most

tangible connection to him in years whilst drifting past icebergs in the Antarctic

Peninsula.


Showers, thundery for a time.


Dad was born and raised in Fiji. He left school at fourteen to work in a sugar cane

factory and it was during this time that the ships caught his attention. These hulking


great vessels navigating the tropical waters he knew so well became spaceships

ready to transport him to another world. A chance to create a better future for

himself. He told the foreman at the factory, ‘One day I will be working on those

ships.’ and the foreman laughed and told him he’d never leave Fiji.


New high expected.


The foremen ate his words. He also ate a slap-up dinner with Dad at the Captain’s

table. That must have tasted sweet. Dad got on the ships and studied hard.

Eventually working his way up to become Chief Engineer. He met my mum in the

East End of London. They had a whirlwind romance before getting married in

nineteen-sixty-nine. She joined him aboard ship for two years. Then they set up

home in England before he went back out to sea.


Becoming fair later.


In my early twenties I went to Fiji for the first time to see where Dad grew up. People

talked about him as if he’d just walked out the room despite the fact he’d died twenty

years before. I had his laugh, they said. I collected their memories like seashells on a

beach, building a father from calcium carbonate.


Rain later, moderate or good.


As I boarded the ship in Ushuaia, I felt a closeness to my dad and the young woman

my mum had been before us children came along, and they began their honeymoon.


How exciting it must have been to know that the world is yours to explore. Mum said

she didn’t feel scared to be leaving the life she knew behind, at least not until the

storms came.


Thundery showers in Northeast, otherwise fair.


I had never been on a cruise before, but the ocean would become my home for the

next nine nights. I knew that the Drake Passage had a reputation for being a difficult

stretch of water to navigate. Butterflies circled the pit of my stomach, like the

albatross following the wake of the ship. The crew announced that we were headed

into rough seas.


Occasionally severe, gale nine.


As the ship began to jerk and sway, I retreated to my cabin. It was clearly going to

take some time to find my sea legs. My bed was a cot rocked by Neptune for the

next twelve hours. There is nothing like lying alone in a cabin, in a vast ocean at the

edge of the world to sharpen the mind. I pondered my own mortality.


Squally wintry showers, good, occasionally poor.


Life aboard ship quickly rolls into a routine. The announcements, the chit chat and

the meals. This is our world now. Floating and contained. Staring at seabirds,

wishing for whales. Surrounded by water, ice and snow. White and blue are the only

colours in our palette. Pristine. Hostile. A simulation of reality.


Falling slowly.


Antarctica is an alien planet, and humans can pass through, but we are not welcome

to stay. So, we rush to zodiac boats, take a thousand photographs, try to distil this

place, capture this feeling. Stop all the clocks. Freeze time. This mad dream of

capturing Antarctica takes me back to childish thoughts of keeping a snowman

forever, trying to hold on tight to a snowflake, having a father.


Rising more slowly.


Icebergs have a lifespan of around three thousand years from their birth as snow

falling onto a glacier to calving off and drifting into the ocean. We have come to their

final resting place in the Southern Hemisphere, the Iceberg Graveyard in Pleneau

Bay. The driver cuts the engine of the zodiac, and we silently contemplate the frozen

cathedrals and scattered diamonds of brash ice. A single salty tear rolls down my

cheek as I tell my dad, we made it to Antarctica. A part of him has made it here.

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