IN MY family, no one went to sea. We were not seagoing kind of people. The idea of sailing across an ocean or around the world was as foreign to us as taking a rocket to the moon. So, it was something of a surprise when I took a job on a cruise ship at the age of thirty. I did it because I was single again, after several years of marriage, and because I had nothing better to do. When you have nothing better to do, you might as well go to sea. The job was writing a daily newspaper for the passengers, a position I didn’t know existed. It paid more than writing the occasional story or book review, which I’d been doing for a while, and there were some perks. Free room and board. Meals in the dining room with the passengers. Complimentary laundry service. A maid to clean my cabin and make my bed every morning. I’d been making my bed all my life, and I was curious how someone else might do it.

The man at the interview, a tall, light-skinned Nordic fellow who had worked on ships himself, cautioned me: “If you take this job, you’ll have to put your things in storage and say goodbye to all your friends. You’ll be out of the country for months at a time. It’s a very different kind of life. Are you sure you want to do this?” No one had ever tried to discourage me from accepting a job at the interview, which made me think the last person in the position must have gone crazy and jumped off the ship, but I knew if I hesitated, I was lost.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to go to sea.”

“Ah, so you like to travel?”

“Very much,” I said, though I had never gone anywhere.

They gave me the job and flew me to Hamburg, Germany, to