Queen Elizabeth II Memories:

I remember the first sauna that I ever experienced.  

The sauna is on the QE2 in 1980 sailing from New York Harbor to Southampton, England where I am to enroll in English boarding school for two years before moving to New York in 1983 having lived in Africa for the first eight years of my life.

On the QE2 entering into a men's room from swimming in a heated, on-deck, outdoor pool, my dad and I stand naked after showers in a brightly lit locker room when my dad beckons me through a wooden door into a dimly lit room with benches.  

I sit on a bench where my dad indicates to sit in the middle of three tiered benches along the back wall of the wood panel sauna lit by light through a window of the door to the locker room.

My dad reaches on the wall beside the door for a ladle and spoons water from a bucket on the wood-slat floor of the sauna.  He pours the ladled water onto an electric burner with hot rocks which steams and scares me to run out of the sauna thinking that it would burn.

At another time during the five day journey across the Atlantic, I venture out of a port door onto deck and the wind slams the port door behind me so that I cannot open it against the wind across the North Atlantic from the Northeast.

Thinking quickly dressed in a blazer, slacks and tie during the night life scene time on board, I grab the rail three steps from the portal door that I exit and pull myself along the rail to the next portal door which I know opens in the direction of the wind.

Pulling myself along the deck holding onto the rail of the deck on the QE2, I feel the wind lifting the lapels of my blazer and I fear that I might be blown overboard.  

I venture the 30 feet to the next portal door, let go of the rail deck side and reach for the handle on the portal door that I pull myself towards for fear of being blown overboard in a strong wind, open the door and I enter the ship's casino where I meander through adults back to my family's berth on a lower level of the ship.

I remember a few other things about the QE2 trip that I take with my dad, mom and brother in 1980, but nothing worth mentioning other than I find the children's play groups to be terribly droll and remember thinking to myself that I want to leave the group.

I have never liked papier maché.