THE DEPRESSION ROOM

‘Does this look like a cruise to you?’, he texted me back a photo after I had asked if he was joking about their coming back home from Galveston. A drive that took them close to five hours. One they embarked on early this morning just after the sun made its appearance.

‘No’, I replied a bit confused. The picture was of a road with a building in the background, the cross streets a bit blurry as I zoomed in to see ‘19th St’. Clearly, it was taken out of the window of a car. But it was still quite unbelievable to me.

‘I bet Papa is mad’, and I knew there was probably a lot of yelling going on.

‘He’s reallllllly mad’, my son emphasised with the extra ‘l’s and went on to explain how they were denied boarding on the cruise ship because his stepmother did not bring her passport or her birth certificate, just her driver’s license.

Her explanation was that she did not need to bring a passport to go to somewhere in the Carribean – the specifics of the itinerary were not shared with me – even though everyone else did. Everyone except her younger son who brought his birth certificate instead, as his passport had expired.

‘We are going out of the country shouldn’t [it] be common sense to bring a passport?’, my son was absolutely correct about that. A quick Google search specifies a need for one unless it is a closed-loop cruise, in which case you would need a birth certificate and a state ID. But when in doubt, one should always bring a passport in order to avoid such a circumstance.

I was still in disbelief about the entire situation as this was a trip planned for three years ago when it was initially cancelled due to another incident brought about by the stepmother’s older son. Still, stepmother had plenty of time to verify the documentation needed instead of sabotaging the children’s summer vacation which they were very much looking forward to these past few months.

Up until early last week, my son wasn’t even planning on going on the cruise as he wanted me to go as well. After his father asked him about going last week, my son decided to go. I was not going to deny him going on a fun vacation that his sisters would be going on as well. I could imagine him feeling left out of the experience if he did not go. However, they now share this unfortunate memory of a cruise not taken.

‘We were taken to the depression room’, my son explained upon his return late tonight.

I looked at him quizzically.

‘It’s actually the place they escort you to when you miss a cruise’, he continued.

‘That’s what they call it?’, I asked, but knew that there was no such thing but can imagine the depressed feelings of those in the room.

‘No’, he replied. I could sense his disappointment.

‘Were there many people there?’, I asked.

‘Just us and one other person’, he replied.

I wondered why his father did not simply go on the cruise without his wife, as he went to a resort in Cancun with the kids last summer due to yet another incident with the stepmother. Moments later, my son let me know that his father actually tried this but was too late when they finally decided on this option.

It’s truly unfortunate that this incident had to happen and that the children missed out on a long-awaited cruise. It all seems a bit odd to me. As if somehow this was planned in advance – the not taking a passport or a birth certificate. Whether or not this was believed to be a closed-loop cruise, beginning and ending at the same port in the US, one should always carry a passport so as to avoid being escorted to the depression room.