Why I Cried Watching Paradise Pull Away From Port

I'm not typically a crier. My husband would tell you I'm the person who watches sad movies without flinching and handles stressful situations with a shrug and a "we'll figure it out" attitude. So when I felt my eyes welling up on the stern deck of the Margaritaville at Sea Paradise as we pulled away from port on our first evening, I was genuinely surprised at myself. We'd boarded that morning in a blur of excitement and logistics. I'd been counting down the days for three months—a whole week away from my job as a high school administrator, away from my responsibilities, away from the constant hum of emails and meetings and parent phone calls. My husband Mike had surprised me with this cruise for my 45th birthday, and I still couldn't quite believe it was real. As we made our way through embarkation, I'd been so focused on finding our cabin, getting our room key cards activated, and figuring out where to grab our first drink that I hadn't really processed where we were. But at 5 PM, when the crew announced all ashore who's going ashore, something shifted. I'd gone up to the LandShark Bar & Grill for a quick look around and ended up wandering further back, past the pool deck and the…