work, rising before dawn and dressing in nice clothing. Wearing shoes again. Paying bills again. We would separate during the day and have our own experiences. The bathroom would have a door. I'm going to miss talking to you while you are going to the bathroom in the morning, I say to Max. You can still do that, he reassured me. …Within 150 miles of NYC the chart starts to warn of civilization with notes like Dump Site Sewage Sludge, Unexploded Bomb, Dump Site Acid Waste, and then Cholera Bank just off Sandy Hook. Little footballs mark the wrecks. Ah, New York. The once pristine Hudson River estuary. Thankfully, most of these notes say “discontinued” next to them and are the sins of the past. Who was it that raised the idea that the ocean was not a toilet bowl I wonder. We began our approach to New York on the evening of our thirteenth day. If we averaged five knots we would arrive in the morning. I am made uncomfortable by night approaches to busy harbors because the lights are overwhelming and I doubt my depth perception. Max is totally cool with it as proven by our dramatic night entrance to the Panama canal, or to Rio Grande in Brazil. I decided to take the first watch and let him have the morning, the sunrise, the Verrazano Narrows. I would take the last sunset, the rising full moon, and the first sighting of land. We ate our last meal, penne with horrible canned meatballs from Brazil, and Max went to sleep. The sky turned lavender and an orange moon rose. A large squall line moved over the sunset like smeared blue eyeshadow and I looked lovingly back and forth between the moon rise and sunset. The sky darkened and the horizon came alive with phosphorescent caterpillars, and we were among the ships entering New York Harbor.
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