To Ease the Passing of Time

Maria and I have just returned from a Caribbean cruise on a ship where most of the passengers were Americans. I’m not going to tell you about the islands that we visited, the excursions that we took or the food that we ate. I’m only going to tell you about the few Americans that we met. With all the division created by the unconventional presidency of Donald Trump and the polarization of opinions between those who blindly support the president and those who are staunchly opposed to him, this was a good opportunity for us to listen to what ordinary Americans had to say, or not to say, about what’s going on in their country. Let me introduce them to you.

Ron and Marcia

Ron and Marcia were one of the two couples sitting at our table for dinner. Ron is the descendant of a Jewish immigrant who came to the United States from Russia at the beginning of the last century. He was born in New York City and now lives in Fort Lauderdale. He studied in a Jewish university, was a police investigator for thirty years, and spent two and a half years in Europe when he was in the army. He likes hunting and fishing. He is now retired and found a lucrative hobby. He restores objects carved in elephant ivory. After telling us about his hobby, he went into a long tirade to denounce the rules to stop all ivory transactions in the USA (including antiques). He told us that those rules were set up by an advisory committee funded by Obama and headed by Hillary Clinton and related to the Clinton foundation. After he finished ranting, there was an uneasy silence at the table. Then Marcia said, “Let’s not talk about politics anymore.” We didn’t.

Marcia is a big and tall American woman. She didn’t talk as much as Ron. She told us about the research that she had started doing on her genealogy. That was interesting to me because I have done the same thing. In another conversation, she said that she no longer wanted to travel to Europe because, according to her, Germany, France and the United Kingdom have already been taken over by immigrants and refugees from Muslim countries.

I was sitting next to Ron. After the first night, I told myself that I was going to have to put up with a Trump supporter for the next nine nights of the cruise. It turned out that I started to like Ron. He always looked me in the eyes when he was talking to me, and he really listened to what I was saying. I told him about the ouananiche, that type of fresh water salmon that lives only in Lac Saint-Jean, and he seemed to be very interested. As a matter of fact, Ron is interested in a lot of things. Twice during the cruise, Ron left the table early to reserve seats for the show for all of us.

Ted and Mary

Ted and Mary live near Nashville, Tennessee. Mary is originally from Texas where her family still lives. I think Ted was born in Tennessee but I’m not sure. One thing for sure, he’s definitely from the South. He speaks with that unequivocal southern drawl. In fact, as Ted and Mary told us, there are different versions of that Southern accent. Even within Texas, it’s possible to tell if someone is from the north or the south. Ted works as a technician for Southwest. He’s very proud of his company.

Mary’s accent is not as thick as her husband’s. There is something in her looks and manners that reminded us of one of our friends who is also an American but from Pennsylvania. She proudly told us about their grandson and their younger daughter who was going to be in a play at her school. Ted and Mary also told us that one of their two daughters (I don’t remember which one) wanted to become a missionary. This indicated to me that they were probably evangelical Christians. In a conversation that we had (I don’t remember on what subject), Mary said that religious opinions shouldn’t be expressed by people in position of power like teachers. To me, that statement showed that they are not fanatics like the 80% majority of evangelical Christians who voted for Trump to pursue a political agenda. From what I could see, Ted and Mary are good and decent people. That’s probably why they didn’t say that they agreed with Ron after he finished talking against Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Ed and Betty

I don’t remember a lot about Ed and Betty. We were sitting at the same table at the buffet only once. I don’t even remember what they looked like. If it wasn’t for Maria’s phenomenal memory, I would not have been able to give you their names. What I do remember about them is that they are also from the South, Kentucky I think, and that they are very liberal. They even supported Castro during the revolution in Cuba. They told us that because of the overwhelming support for Trump in their part of the country, they were reluctant to say that they are from the South. Ed was brought up on a farm. He told us that his father didn’t want them to give names to the pigs they were raising because he didn’t want the kids to become too attached to the animals that were going to be killed for food later. Maria could relate to that since she had a pig as a pet when she was a child in Vietnam.

Leila Marie

When we first saw Leila Marie she was sitting alone at a table in the lounge in front of an almost empty bottle of champagne. She was obviously drunk. She is from California, probably in her fifties, with long blond hair and a skin damaged by too much sun. She kept saying that Maria was beautiful and that I was lucky to have a wife like her. She said that she was from Swedish descent and that she was fluent in Swedish and Chinese, and that she could also speak Arabic and Spanish. Maria and she had a short conversation in Chinese. Maria learned a little bit of Chinese when she was working for an international bank in Vietnam. When I told her that my first language was French, she said that although she could not speak it, she could understand French. I asked her a few simple things, and she was able to understand and even answer to me in French. She said that she had studied to become a diplomat, but that she was presently out of work. What a waste of talent, I thought.

Leila Marie lived in Thailand for seven years where she worked as a scuba diving instructor. She also spent some time in Patagonia sailing along the coast with an older man who was studying something related to the environment. There were both sadness and kindness in her eyes. Even if she was a drunk, when she was talking to us, she was always focused, and you could see the intensity in her eyes. We never talked politics with Leila Marie, but I cannot imagine her being a Trump supporter. We crossed her a few times after that night, and she always looked a little bit tipsy. She told us that she was receiving treatments for a problem. Maybe it has to do with her consumption of alcohol. Maybe that’s why that even with her language skills she doesn’t have a job.

We briefly chatted or exchanged a few words with more Americans during the cruise. They were all helpful and friendly. I find that it’s very easy to socialize with Americans. They are very open and informal. I remember a lady from Las Vegas who asked us if we were newlyweds. Within the thirty seconds that she talked to us, she said that it was her wedding anniversary and that she had been married twice. This is a big contrast with Europeans who are a lot more formal and cold with people who have not been formally introduced to them.

I noticed a few things about politics. In the gym aboard the ship, there were exercise machines with a monitor mounted on each of them where you could watch TV while working out. People were either watching Fox News if they were Trump supporters or CNN if they were not. During the duration of the cruise, I saw only two or maybe three people who were watching Fox News. At the airport in Fort Lauderdale, all the TVs that I saw were tuned to CNN or MSN TV, not Fox News.

It’s true that, especially now, the United States is a divided country, but I think that all countries are somewhat divided. If it’s not by politics, it’s by religion, language, race or culture. While we were waiting for our flight to Ottawa in Fort Lauderdale, there was an old couple sitting next to us waiting for their flight to Toronto. The old man was looking at the people boarding their flight to Montréal. He turned to his wife and with an air of contempt and disdain, spitted to her ear through his yellow teeth like a snake, “Look at those people going to Montréal; I would never go to Montréal.” Hate, division and intolerance can be found everywhere. I guess it's in our human nature.

P.-S.: After recently returning from another cruise during which we had the opportunity to meet two other American couples who, from what we could understand, were Trump supporters, I decided to add another paragraph to my article. Like most Americans that we've met, those people were very nice and friendly. We had a good time together laughing and chatting about all kinds of subjects (excluding, of course, politics). What we realized is that that openness and friendliness are very shallow. I once heard someone say that it takes more time to befriend a Canadian, but that the friendship is more genuine and last longer. I think that it's generally true, but not always.