Some people enter your life loudly.
Others arrive like a soft lamp left on in the dark.
Baba C was the latter. She was one of the first people who stayed when I sang karaoke –which, if you know me by now, is no small act of courage. She didn’t laugh at me. She laughed with me. And when the song ended, she clapped like it mattered.
We would end up watching the World Series together. Playing Ulcer every free chance got. Walking side by side through a Japanese town. And one evening, we shared a dance in honor of her late husband’s favorite song –a song she even suggested I sing, though we both knew silence was kinder.
Later, much later, she became the first person on this journey I trusted with the truth I’ve never said out loud the dark thoughts, the heaviness, the parts of myself I usually edit for safety. I didn’t plan to tell her. It just happened, the way truth does when it finally feels welcome.
She didn’t interrupt.
She didn’t fix.
She didn’t tell me to look on the bright side.
She just listened. And we wept together.
There is a kind of love that isn’t romantic and isn’t parental –it’s steadier than both. It says, You are allowed to exist exactly as you are in this moment.
That was Baba C.
When the cruise itinerary quietly shifted from together to goodbye, I realized something painful: after sixteen nights of shared dinners, shared laughter, shared bravery, the group would be leaving me behind. They were flying home or elsewhere. I was staying on eleven more nights alone on the ship.
So I did the only thing that felt right. I took the Babas to their hotel.
A ninety-minute subway ride transfers, stairs, crowds, almost losing Baba P when train car door closes –the kind of journey that feels longer because you know it’s carrying an ending.
We sat for lunch. We talked about everything and nothing. The future. The past. The strangeness of meeting people who feel like they’ve always been there, even when you’ve only just met.
At the hotel bar, we hugged the kind of hug that isn’t rushed, that lingers just long enough to say what words can’t.
Baba C looked at me and smiled.
Later, back on the ship, the silence was noticeable. The dinner table was gone. The dance floor felt bigger. The karaoke mic heavier. But something remained.
Before Baba C, I believed strength meant carrying things alone.
After her, I understood something else entirely:
Sometimes strength is letting someone sit with you in the dark –and sometimes healing looks like singing “You Are My Sunshine” with a woman who reminds you that you still are.
She showed me that traveling doesn’t stop at any age.
And neither does kindness.
