There’s No Place Like Home

Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz, went on quite an adventure to learn that truism. The Hero’s Journey, described by Joseph Campbell, talks about Adventure, the hardships, and the coming home in the end.

Dorothy’s adventure was told in several different scenes, starting with her humdrum life working her aunt and uncle’s farm. Then there was a tornado that uprooted everything and took her to a strange and distant land.

Toto, Dorothy’s little dog, was the ultimate instigator of the adventure: his barking at the evil Ms Gulch caused Dorothy to run away from home to keep Toto safe. Randy was my Toto, and his allergies were the evil Ms Gulch we had to face.

Tornado

Tornadoes generally give some minor amount of notice before they arrive, and the arrival can be “just” high winds, or can be damage and destruction hitting the land and buildings. In Dorothy’s case, the tornado warned of its coming, then hit the house spun it round and round before a good hard whack onto the ground.

“Our” tornado started out as “just” high winds, with our efforts to get the house in order enough to put it on the market to sell. And then it hit with a vengeance, getting an offer sooner than expected, and spun me round and round, ridding our lives off all we owned, until the house sold and we left our home of 20 years in a car stuffed to the roof with what remained. It was quite a thump we felt as we drove away, probably to never be there again.

Arriving in a Strange Land

The whirlwind included a quick trip to Boulder and Denver to say goodbye to various friends and family, and continued as we drove to Albuquerque, then Ohio, and the west coast. It was all a bit surreal, this saying goodbye again and again. Leaving my home state. Moving toward the plan to live on a residential cruise ship.

But in Albuquerque we really thumped down hard because we learned there was no cruise ship we could call home, and we were on this road trip with all we owned.

That trip was a Lion action indeed. It took courage for us to leave our home and friends to make our new life.

It’s easier to survive having the wind knocked out of you when you don’t own much. It’s easier to pivot when you don’t own much and have uprooted yourself for a totally new plan. After a couple of days of fretting, I returned to my research and found a company that seemed promising as our residential cruise ship. It worked out: that’s where we are today.

That regrouping exercise was my Scarecrow moment. I used my brain to work through our predicament.

Yellow Brick Road

We continued our two-month tour as scheduled, since there were so many plans in place, and worked out where we would live for the six months between the original embarkation day of December and the new embarkation day of May.

We saw new lands as we drove west from Cleveland, Ohio, to Fargo, North Dakota, across the northern lands of the U.S., to Portland, Oregon. We drove through plains, mountains, and river canyons. Then we turned south and saw redwood forests, rocky shores, military bases, and offshore oil wells before stopping in Los Angeles for several days.

Finally, we turned east again and headed to the city we had decided to stay in for the winter because we could manage its winters with the minimal winter clothing we had: Las Vegas, Nevada.

The Poppy Field

In the film, the Wicked Witch of the West lures the travelers into a poppy field while they are on the way to see the Wizard seeking to slow them down to thwart their plan.

During the two months we wandered the western section of the U.S., we were pleased with the beautiful scenery and wonderful people we encountered. But it was like the opium-induced dreams the Wicked Witch put the wandering adventurers into.

Our Wicked Witch was Victoria Cruises, which held out a false promise and delayed us from getting to our new home. Their opiate was a dream, which turned into a confusing nightmare of double-talk and misdirection. Like with Dorothy, it served as a test of our resolve.

In that sense, Las Vegas served well: an over-the-top appeal to the senses, with dazzling lights and sounds and distractions — much like Oz from a distance. Luckily, we were not alone: we had good friends there who helped steer us through it and, at the end, whisked us off to New York City to get us back on track. Dorothy also had people to support her during her stay in Oz and to get her back on track.

Flying Monkeys

…but not before there was another impediment thrown in our way!

Just as we felt we were getting everything to come together in a positive way, we found ourselves on a cruise ship that twisted everything in their favor and against us: Norwegian Cruise Lines to get us across the Atlantic to Southampton, England, where we were to meet our Residential Cruising (to join Odyssey, our residential cruising home).

Their choice to not work with any customer on passing along price changes, or allowing people to change their embarking location, and even not taking responsibility for luggage left in their care to be transferred to another location felt like watching the monkeys kidnap Dorothy and Toto, and tear the scarecrow up.

It felt almost malevolent, like that Wicked Witch was behind the scenes to orchestrate horrors, leaving us feeling unable to do anything to help change the fates. That was a real flying monkeys episode in our adventure.

The Norwegian Cruise portion of our adventure was bad enough that Randy ended up in the hospital, and suffered health issues for months — until we were well settled in onboard Odyssey.

Gatekeeper

How do you react when you finally reach the destination you’ve been seeking, only to learn the delay is delayed again? You’ve traveled so far! You’ve been through so much! How can you be deprived of entry to your magical kingdom, your new home?

We learned on our cruise across the Atlantic Ocean that our ship wasn’t departing from Southampton as planned. There were delays getting our ship into drydock in Belfast (the ship ahead of it needed weeks of additional work), then unexpected problems with our ship in dry dock.

Talk about twists and turns of the Yellow Brick Road adventure!

What do you do? You go with the flow. The company will pay for our lodging while in Belfast during the extra two-week delay. That’s more than fair, especially since that allowed us to spend more time with our friends who sailed across the Atlantic with us. We went to Dublin for a few days to engage in some Irish excursions. The train to Belfast was easy, and we met an actor on the train who was on his way to an event. We rested and recovered in a hotel on the edge of town that backed onto a large green park, making our stay in Belfast refreshing.

Well, the two-week delay turned into four months — several days or a week or two at a time. We got really good at flexing our schedule and going with the flow. That’s a good skill in life. That’s a good skill when you are about to live on a ship that could have itinerary changes. Who gets to live in a city like Belfast and deems themselves an honorary citizen? It was magical for us.

Putting Us Back Together

By moving into an apartment between the city center and Queen’s University, we were able to embed ourselves in a quiet neighborhood. We had easy access to grocery shopping, pharmacies, restaurants, and city activities. With our fellow shipmates scattered around the city, at least those who chose to stay in Belfast, we even had people to socialize with.

The slow pace of not traveling, the pace of getting back into some sense of routine, started to heal our souls and change-wracked brains. A neighborhood cat adopted us, coming in through the open window to say hello before we could gently escort it back outside. Neighborhood kids would shyly say hello as we walked by, eventually pulling their parents into conversation with us.

Even the Club for the Orange Order across the street welcomed me as a visitor. The Botanic Gardens with Victorian greenhouse was a delight to roam, especially when the Ferris wheel was running. Indian and Chinese food, hamburgers and pizza, steak and chocolate — what more could you ask for? Ah, an Irish pub or restaurant!

Yes, this was a great location for us to start our healing and settling in.

Wizard Behind the Curtain

It turns out that getting a ship that was only semi-maintained during its years of not being used, having been put aside as a result of the changes Covid-19 brought to cruising, requires some magic to bring it back to life. As Dorothy had a wizard behind a curtain, so did we. Mike and Kathy, the heart and brains behind the concept of this residential ship, worked studiously to bring the ship up to par to be seaworthy again. Oh, their dedication and hard work as they encountered one obstacle after another is to be revered. It was scary and frustrating for all of us.

Having been screwed once by a wanna-be residential cruise company, and knowing there were other residential cruise ships that weren’t succeeding in sailing, how could we have confidence in these two people? Their regular and transparent communications kept our hope alive.

And they did succeed. Their success wasn’t the two-week dry dock they planned for in May, but with four months of dedicated push and pull, they succeeded in getting the Odyssey sailing. The wizard behind the curtain was powerful after all. Yet just as Toto reveals the Wizard isn’t all powerful, the Villa Vie folks are also ordinary people, doing what they know how to do.

Going Home

Once we finally got aboard and sailed, we started getting to know our neighbors in different ways than we did in Belfast. We quit shopping and cooking our own meals and doing laundry; the ship staff took over those tasks. Getting used to others waiting on you hand and foot is something I resisted for a long time. I’ve been self-reliant most of my life. It took some adjustment.

Setting sail was as delightful for us as Dorothy’s departure from Oz was for her. She didn’t fly away in the hot air balloon after all because Toto, her ultimate protector from harm, had other ideas. Dorothy, it turns out, always had the power to “go home,” just as we did. She clicked her heels, we settled into a new routine — several times, it seems.

I am learning I don’t have to click my ruby-slipper heels together to get home because I am home. It’s not the home I left in Colorado. It’s the home I’ve adopted on the high seas. It feels natural to be on a ship. It’s a bit unusual for me, leaving all the driving and itinerary to others, and I’m adapting.

It took awhile to know the ship well enough that I could get where I wanted easily; at first, there’s confusion as to which way is fore, and which is aft. Getting to know 100, then 175, then 275 people has had some entertaining moments, especially since here and there, some change out to go home — for “awhile” or for forever. It felt like drinking from a water hose — I couldn’t quite take it all in easily.

Name tags help us remember all of the names. Interacting with these new people helps me associate the new names with the increasingly familiar faces. Eating together, going on excursions together, and attending ship events together, all help cement the connection we are all forming. The evolving community we’re all part of.

Waking Up in My Own Bed

As the daze of all the changes and challenges we’ve faced drops away, I’m realizing I am definitely home. I’m finally waking up in my own bed. My sleep is better than it’s been in years. The life I’ve loved through the decades is happening again. I can attend lectures, choir concerts, and salons.

Meals can be as formal or informal as I desire — and all are delicious. I’m traveling to my heart’s content, seeing as much of a port as I want as we sail around the world. Slowly I’m learning how to be a seaman, in that maritime rules affect my days and activities and it’s good to be responsible for myself. My environmental living habits are taking on a different flavor and my environmental action is going global as we strive to make an effort to positively impact the communities we visit.

I’m home. I’m really, really home.

There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home — the home of your choosing and making.

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Kit Cassingham

Kit is the co-founder of Residential Cruising, and is best known as a longevity mindset coach at Live in Focused Energy. She and her husband, Randy, live full-time on the Residential Cruising ship Villa Vie Odyssey, where they are “Digital Nomads” — continuing their work while living aboard the ship.

• There’s No Place Like Home
• The First 90 Days
• “Why Are You Here?”