Because I’m drinking English Breakfast tea today with my chocolate chip cookie, I thought about the cruise we took across the English Channel back in 1994. It was the week of June 6, the 50th anniversary of the landing on Normandy beach during World War II.

Our cruise ship traveled from England, where we had been touring in London, to the coast of France. Now, the English Channel is known for its rough waters, but they were so rough on this trip that my husband and I and the couple traveling with us were probably the only people unaffected by the rocking and rolling. Lucky us!

The ship needed to dock in the closest port to ride out the storm so it headed for the beach at Normandy. Unfortunately, because the big anniversary celebration was going on, there were no slips available for our ship. Consequently, we cruised perpendicular to the land with the waves broadsiding us most of the time.

At one point, the four of us started down about six wide steps when the ship lurched and the glass cases from the gift stores directly ahead of us tore across the hallway and crashed. Talk about providing excitement. As you can imagine, we were almost the only ones in the dining room for lunch.

Today, when I was thinking about a title for this blog and landed on the one above, I had to look up the word “cruise.” (By now you know my love for the dictionary!) The first definition is–to sail or ride about from place to place, as for pleasure or in search of something.

Sometimes things in our lives can seem like a storm, tossing us this way and that, and so my wish for you today is to cruise happily through every storm.

For more information on D-Day and the landings on Normandy Beach,there are two good sources that I found: http://www.army.mil/d-day/ or an article in the International Business Times on June 5, 2012.

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