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July 2008
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This 'n That
Strangers in the Night, continued
further tales of tablemates
Last month I wrote about dinner tables/table mates we have encountered while cruising. Now, a few more.
One of our most unusual experiences took place on our very first cruise, 13 years ago.
We had been put at a table for eight along with six women who had the following things in common: they were all part of large group traveling together, they were all from the South, they were all old enough to be our grandmothers and they didn't like one another.
By the time we met them they had already paired off, each of the duos refusing, for reasons that were never clear to us, to speak to either of the other two. They were clearly delighted to have a man join the table and I was grudgingly accepted only because I was part of the package. We had dinner together for two weeks as we sailed around the Greek islands. Conversations were strange; each of the duos would silently wait their turn to talk to my husband and he would patiently talk with each pair, one at a time. Despite our attempts, there was never a conversation in which everyone would participate. I would try to chat with the “ladies in waiting” and they always responded politely but it was clear they were interested only in talking to my husband, willing to silently sit in queue as long as he distributed his attention fairly. That came to mean his starting with a different pair every evening. It was all rather funny but somewhat exhausting.
One of them was from South Carolina. It was amazing that she was even on a cruise since her idea of travel was going as far away as Georgia. She had a particular fascination with my husband because she had never met a “real Yankee” before. She had grown up hearing tales about the black sheep cousin, long since banished from the family for being in a “mixed marriage” with someone from the north! (No, I didn't make this up.) Mary, who was 82, insisted on riding a donkey up the hillside in Santorini and we're fairly certain she did that because one of the other women had said she was too old.
We still get Christmas cards from some of the lovely lavender ladies - and they were all lovely, once you got to know them - they just weren't lovely to one another. We never did solve that mystery but they were delightfully memorable. And every year for five years my husband received a box of pecans from one of them.
Several years and many cruises later we were sailing with a different cruise line, and we came to understand and appreciate what a really good Maitre d' is supposed to do.
Putu was from The Philippines; handsome, charming and possessing an uncanny knack for sizing people up and putting them at a table where they would be happy. He also managed to make every passenger feel as if he/she were the most important person on board.
We had known Putu for several years so when he told he was putting us at a very special table we were sure we were in for a treat. I hate to admit our hearts somewhat sank when we first met Hal and Jim, our only tablemates. The two men had never met before and couldn't have been more different from one another but both were widowed and were traveling alone. Jim was unbelievably tall, or had been at one point in time, but he was now bent completely over at the waist from a debilitating bone condition and walked at a 90 degree angle. He dressed in one of his two blue denim shirts every night, although he did wear a dark suit and tie on formal nights.
Hal, on the other hand, was never without a coat and tie, even during the day. He was 93, distinguished looking and completely deaf. He could hear absolutely nothing and was unaware of any conversation going on around him. Asking questions was pointless because he had no idea what we were saying but as the cruise progressed he would occasionally decide to tell us something about himself. Whenever that happened we all seized the moment and stopped talking in order to listen. Hal was long retired from a career as an international businessman which had afforded him the chance to know and dine with foreign presidents, ambassadors and dignitaries around the world. His wife had died ten years before, they had no children and most of his contemporaries were also deceased. He loved to travel and play bridge so he spent a lot of time on cruise ships. I don't know how the bidding at bridge was handled but I'm sure he found a way. If my husband's lectures didn't conflict with a bridge game, Hal would be seated in the front row...simply to show support to his dinner companion, we assume, and he would always say the lecture had been good.
Jim holds a special place in my memory book. He was a coal miner from West Virginia but had always wished he went to college. He married his childhood sweetheart, the love of his life, and they had six children. He willingly worked in the mines to support his family but at his wife's urging, he eventually started night school. He did that for fifteen years, taking one class at a time until he proudly earned a teaching degree. His wife's death coincided with his graduation; she didn't get to see Jim as the man he became. He taught school for twenty years until he was no longer able to stand. He never remarried and spoke about his wife as if she was down the hall waiting for him; it was very touching.
Once again, those strangers in the night weren't strange at all. And once again, Putu knew what he was doing.
Anne Vargas vargasanne@hotmail.com