We left our luggage by the boat and walked up the scary bridge to the boat.  It’s not a luxury ship by any stretch of the imagination.  It looks like all business and just enough comfort to get by.  We lined up in the lounge area to check in.  Tears just came and overwhelmed me.  I’m on the ship.  I’m actually finally going to Antarctica.  This is it.  I’ve wanted this for so long.  This isn’t the way I wanted to go, but this is way life brought it to me and in that, it is perfect.

In 2014 I applied for about 30 jobs in Antarctica and heard nothing.  In 2015, I applied for 53 jobs.  I got one interview.  It was a great interview, but the job was for an alternate position and I had already decided to move to Thailand.  I had two weeks to make a decision.  I decided on Thailand and I never heard back from the interview, so I chose correctly.  I had another Antarctica job call me to set up an interview, but when I called back to set up the interview, no one responded.  That was the job I was best suited for – it was a construction management job.  Then in 2017, I applied for about 15 more jobs.  Silence.  At some point I felt tired and old and decided to stop trying.  As my 50^th birthday approached, I decided I would go as a tourist and it would be a birthday thing.  It is very expensive and with buying a new house, I was not able to save the money I needed to go.  It also seemed weird to think I was going to travel alone on my 50^th birthday.  Not that travelling alone is an issue for me, but am I energetically accepting my aloneness by doing this?

This is the last continent that I have to visit.  It is also the last continent I have to take my late husband’s ashes to.  This is more than just a birthday.

I have always been so fascinated with snow and ice.  It might be because I grew up in Florida and never experienced either or is it something else?  I spend more time hiking and snowshoeing in the winter than I spend hiking in the summer.  I love seeing everything blanketed in white.  I love the sound of it as you walk through or slide over it.  So many sounds it makes.  At the same time, I also love the lack of sound as it insulates and quiets everything around it.  Ice and snow come in so many shapes, consistencies and gradations of color from bright blue to shades of grey, black or bright white.  Most people think I am crazy for liking the cold or wanting to go to a place with only rock, snow and ice.  What an amazing experience Antarctica would be to see a place most people can’t even fathom.  Plus……penguins…duh.

Then I meet and start dating Richard.  He actually wanted to go to Antarctica and wanted to go with me.  His desire to go helped me to get over the fact that I can’t actually afford this. This is no longer a statement of aloneness.  It’s a goodbye to a previous life, several previous lives actually.   It is the final grieving of those lives, a process that seemed to have no end.  It is the welcoming (with open arms) of a new life, a new relationship and a new maturity.  None of the new would have been as deep if the old had not been experienced and learned from.  But, at 50, it’s time to be free.  I have worked so unbelievably hard emotionally to have the life I want and to see life clearly for what it is.  This is my time now.  This is the trip that ceremonially claims this as my life!

So, I stand in line to check in, crying.  Richard asks if it is tears of joy.  I say that it is although it’s really tears of everything.  No one particular emotion, tears of finality, tears knowing some sort of waiting is over, tears knowing it’s not the Antarctica experience I wanted, but the one life wanted for me, tears that my bank account might never be the same, tears of relief, tears of relaxing and some tears of joy.

After we have all checked in and settled in to our rooms, we all meet back in the lounge again to talk logistics of the trip and to have a toast to the end of the year.  Oh, yea, it’s not only the end of my 40’s and the end of a few lifetimes.  It’s also the end of the year, and the end of a decade.  It’s the end of everything and the start of everything.  Off we go!