It had been eight years since my last cruise. When Mom, now eighty-seven years-old, mentioned that she would like to see the Norwegian fjords and Iceland, I hesitated. I wanted to spend time with Mom – every day with her was a blessing – but a cruise ship again? I shuddered thinking about elevator buttons, public door handles, linoleum table surfaces, community lounge chairs, and the ladles at the buffet, fondled by thousands of hands.

‘Don’t you remember how clean it was?’ Mom asked, reading my mind. ‘The hand-washing lectures? There’s a medical centre on board. I caught a cough on my cruise last year, no big deal. I had to pay four hundred and thirty-nine dollars for the doctor’s visit, plus medicine. The steward brought me room service and I stayed in bed and watched movies. I had a large porthole and could see the water.’

It was clear that Mom was signing up for the cruise, with or without me. For a month, I kept the tab of the cruise itinerary open on my laptop, researching knitting stores near the ports of call. Eventually, the north, with its rolling, black sea and troves of Nordic wool, called me like the Sirens’ song.

A lot had changed in cruising over the past eight years. There was a new concept called ‘freestyle’. There were no assigned tables or set dining times, and we chose when and where we wanted to eat. Passengers could dress in the attire that best expressed their personalities. However, the crew drew the line when a woman showed up at the buffet wearing a thong bikini and a sheer wrap with triangles of cloth covering her breasts. Her patent-leather high-heeled flip-flops were not to code either.

Further placating my fears, hygiene rules had improved as well. We weren’t left to our own devices with cleanliness. With three thousand passengers and two thousand staff, disinfecting every pair of hands was daunting. Hand sanitizers stood at every door. A staff-supervised sink with automatic soap dispensers faced the dining room. One man, Aladdin, took his job as hy-genie seriously, spraying hands with Purell™ before the line-up at the all-you-could-eat breakfast, lunch or dinner buffet.

‘Washy, washy, happy, happy, stay healthy!’ he chanted, with each pump of his magic bottle, three meals a day over ten days. Aladdin’s voice never cracked, his legs never buckled. I heard him in my sleep. I still hear him when I disinfect my hands.

Bingo had transformed into a lesson in marketing. Single sheets were replaced by packages: one Bingo sheet plus one instant win scratcher and one red lottery ticket for a chance to claim a free cruise; three Bingo sheets plus three instant win scratchers and three red lottery tickets for a chance to claim a free cruise – we got the drill. It became interesting at five Bingo sheets, where the offer jumped to ten instant win scratchers, ten red lottery tickets and an I love Bingo t-shirt. It was a no-brainer. More was more.

Even Bingo cards had changed. Each number was perforated, so no stampers were needed. In my previous cruise report, I shared how part of my enjoyment was placing a satisfying stamp in the centre of the square. Now, punching out the disk and folding the paper back like a hanging chad left me as unresolved and unsatisfied as the 2000 Bush vs. Gore election.

Once we crossed into international waters, Mom made a beeline for the casino to try her luck on the slot machines. They had changed as well: the oversized arcade games flashed with lights and numbers, but had no coin slot. Mom expertly slid her frequent-cruising card into the reader and played until past midnight. Meanwhile, I stayed in bed, knitting a swatch for a Fair Isle pattern and listening to a podcast.

What hadn’t changed were men’s pick-up lines. Mom and I soaked our weary bones, spasming muscles, and aching bunions in the secluded hot tub at the stern, overlooking the North Sea, as the ship traveled from Scotland to Norway. I was sore from knitting a complex pattern with two colours of Shetland wool at the same time, and Mom’s shoulder was acting up after a night of pushing the slot machines’ buttons.

‘You pretty ladies have room for one more?’ a young man asked.

‘We’ll scootch,’ Mom laughed.

I did the scootching, being closest to the hot tub stairs.

He set his plastic tumbler on the ledge. The inch of amber liquid contrasted with the steamed lobster shade of his hair. He eased into the hot tub, grimacing as his middle hit the scorching water.

‘I’m Kyle,’ he said, (name changed to protect a potential minor). ‘You’re sisters?’

Suggesting I was Mom’s age did not put him in my good books. Not that I wanted to write his name in it anyway. He looked like he had just learned to read. Was he trying to impress my mother? With that comment, he had made me an octogenarian, skipping three decades of my life yet to live. I was in perimenopause, but I had barely crossed into the second half-century of my time on earth. Or did he consider me a decade younger, in my mid-seventies, implying that my grandmother and my grandfather, a priest, had missed the pitter-patter of tiny feet?

‘Thank you,’ Mom tittered, taking the bait. ‘I’m eighty-seven, this is my daughter, she’s fifty-four.’

Mom might be proud of her age, but that was her circus. There was no reason to share the monkey on my back with a stranger. In one swoop, she had made me a year older.

‘Good to know.’ He reached for his tumbler and took a sip. ‘Nothing like a Scotch in the morning.’

We were in international waters, but he didn’t look old enough to order the beverage legally on his own. It seemed that ‘freestyle’ had no bounds.

‘Have you cruised before?’ I asked Kyle, attempting to place his age and divert Mom from revealing more of my private biography.

‘I’m in the Navy, submarine division,’ he said. ‘I’m here with several mates.’

He smiled proudly, revealing a set of pearly whites recently finished with orthodontic treatment. Not even American teeth grow that straight. I know, because I drove two kids to orthodontic appointments.  And, with his barrel-chest and muscles like an undercooked chicken, Kyle was definitely not a Navy Seal. I was not about to let him get away with this.

‘How wide are the submarines?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you get claustrophobic?’

‘About double this hot tub.’ He spread his arms wide, exposing a cluster of freckles resembling a shamrock on his inner arm.

I’ve seen The Hunt for Red October. Sean Connery had more than Kyle’s wingspan on his underwater vessel.

‘I’ve never been on a submarine,’ Mom chimed in. ‘I stick with cruises because I can’t swim.’

‘You’d love it,’ he said. ‘Where do you live? Maybe you can visit when I’m in port.’

I’d read about young scoundrels targeting elderly widows on cruise ships. Not on my watch.

‘Where have you travelled with the Navy?’ I asked before Mom gave him her address and social security number.

‘Fort Lauderdale, Bahamas, Cozumel, Cayman Islands,’ he listed. ‘It’s hard to say, we were mostly under water.’

The itinerary sounded uncannily familiar.

‘We took that exact route with Princess for my other daughter’s wedding,’ Mom exclaimed.

‘Good block, Mom,’ I thought. That was in 2003 – before Kyle was born.

‘Two daughters?’ he asked. ‘You must have started when you were a baby.’

My stomach churned from the vile implications.

‘Her sister lives near me, and Christina lives in Germany with her husband and children.’ Mom’s creep-o-meter must have also turned red.

‘Have you been to Oktoberfest?’ Kyle asked me.

‘I don’t like crowds,’ I snapped, hoping he would get the hint that three was not company.

‘Never made it there myself.’ He took a swig of his drink, sputtering from the potency. ‘No naval base in Munich.’

At least he got his geography right.

Be freestyle, I told myself. Go with the flow, enjoy the cruise. Maybe Kyle was a newbie officer. Who cared if he wasn’t? Maybe he had a penchant for naval films and a bedroom full of Lego submarine models.

‘Where did you say you lived in Germany?’ he asked.

‘I’m the right level of prune,’ I blurted, standing in the hot tub. ‘Mom, you have your slot tournament.’

Thankfully, Mom got the hint and hoisted herself out of the water.

‘Enjoy the cruise, ladies,’ Kyle said. ‘See you around.’

After dinner, as Mom scurried to the casino and I headed back to our cabin, I saw a group of teenagers reading The Cruise Daily on the noticeboard. In the centre of the scrum stood a tall, red-haired young man dressed in jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers. His hands were empty, no plastic tumbler of Scotch, yet his hair and three-leaved clover birthmark on his arm gave him away.

‘Kids, move it! Los Machos starts in five minutes,’ a petite woman with cropped, white hair ordered, sharply clapping her hands. ‘Kyle, stop daydreaming. Hut-hut.’

Kyle turned. Recognizing me, he gave a sheepish grin. I flashed him a genuine smile. Kyle hadn’t lied. His mother was a general in charge of her teenaged corps on the high seas. He had been taking a Scotch break with two civilians before reporting for duty – freestyle at its finest.

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Christina Tolan is represented by Thérèse Coen, Susanna Lea Associates.

Photographs by Funny Pearls.