50 Years of 'I Do': Our Norwegian Breakaway Anniversary

I still remember the moment Tom handed me that envelope at breakfast last spring. My hands were shaking as I opened it, and when I saw the Norwegian Cruise Line logo, I actually gasped. After fifty years of marriage, he could still surprise me. A whole week on the Norwegian Breakaway, departing from New York in June. Just the two of us, celebrating half a century together. Neither of us had cruised before. We're not exactly the adventurous type—Tom's idea of excitement has always been trying a new restaurant in our hometown of Scranton. But our daughter Sarah had been raving about her cruise experience for months, showing us pictures of the ship online. "Mom, Dad, you'd love it," she kept saying. "It's like a floating resort. You literally don't have to think about anything." Coming from Sarah, whose idea of relaxation is a good book and silence, that meant something. The morning we arrived at the Manhattan Terminal, I felt like a kid on her first day of school. The Norwegian Breakaway rose up before us like a gleaming white castle, impossibly large and impossibly real. Tom grabbed my hand and squeezed it. "You ready, Em?" he asked, using the nickname he'd called me since we were…