My Cabin Steward is a Shaman

It’s the little things.

Always the little things.

I’m been traveling on a ship that has traveled from Germany to Africa and which is now headed to the Caribbean, and I haven’t had to make my bed.

Not once.

Each morning, I leave my cabin (usually in a semi-wreck state) and when I return later in the day, magically, it’s clean!

Had it not been for this smiling man of slight build who is constantly in the hallway cleaning other cabins, I would have thought that I had my own personal faerie.

Well, I do. Sorta. Hector is his name–and he’s always smiling. Every time he sees me, he greets me with good morning and wishes me a good day. I half-imagine that he spends his day showering me with blessings.

He folds my clothes on my spare bed, and he notices how many pillows I used the night prior (I have three) and fluffs them just so.

But it’s not just pillows, hellos and good mornings. It’s how genuine he is–like he really, really cares about me.

I’ve had some tough days on ship. It’s not always easy to be an introvert with six hundred students and two hundred crew and staff members. I’ve struggled to find a quiet space and a little peace.

On those tough days, it’s like he knows that something’s up, and that the only thing that’s keeping me from free-falling into a dark canyon is the bastion of orderliness he brings to my life.

His work is holy work.

He helps me to defy entropy, which is always nipping at my toes, and he keeps my daemons at bay.

I envision him in a parallel universe… in the jungles of Peru, leading an Ayahuasca ceremony and singing ancient icaros in Quechua, the language of the indigenous people there; a medicine man praying for the healing of others.

When I look at him now, smiling at me from down the hall, I don’t see a cabin steward anymore.

I see a shaman.

 

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