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The
trip wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Life wasn’t supposed to be this way.
How much can get thrown your way, and you still manage to keep
your kayak upright?
Ah,
the kayak. Now that’s another story.
I got it into my brain (and body) about a year ago that I’d
learn how to kayak. It was the sight from my train window while
rolling through the Rockies that got to me – white water tripping
madly over rock. I can remember the precise moment. The mountains were breathtaking enough, especially to the
girl from Eastern Ontario who thought she knew mountains. But the hilly peaks of my childhood hometown with its staunch
United Empire Loyalist churches atop every one of those peaks, and
far-reaching steeples atop of every one of those churches, were really
just that – hills. The
Rockies, now these were mountains.
But
even so, even in the midst of such towering rock, it wasn’t until I
saw that raging river spitting white water that I was moved to action
– or to consider action. To contemplate moving my own mountains, so
to speak.
Which
river did this to me, I don’t know.
But that nameless river was enough to make a forty-seven year
old woman suddenly contemplate doing something completely outside the
normal realm of her experience, something say, rash.
Like putting her large frame into the tiny cockpit of a
white-water kayak, sealing herself in with the spray skirt, and
throwing herself down a river.
Note
the choice of the word. I
contemplated such an action.
But
still, the idea took hold. Found a permanent place within my brain,
but just as
much within my body. I physically felt the urge to go down such a river, as if the
idea to kayak was somehow directly linked to my bones and flesh and
muscle, part of the river-rush of blood streaming through the chambers
of my heart, the oxygen streaming through the capillaries of my lungs.
It was most odd.
Now
it wasn’t a large river that I saw from the train window somewhere
in the Rockies. A large river never prompted this kind of reaction in
me. I know large rivers. Lived my early years on the shores of the St.
Lawrence, a river large enough to hold a thousand islands.
Large
rivers stir within me something akin to hearth and home,
bread-rising-in-the-oven, chestnuts-roasting-on-an-open-fire.
But then, I grew up in a household where something wonderful
was called “the next best thing to sliced bread” – store bought,
of course. And chestnuts,
well, I never saw a chestnut (let alone one roasting on an open fire)
until I was an adult and moved into a house where every second year
the gigantic tree growing next to the porch with the corrugated roof
produced a banner crop of chestnuts. They sounded like bombs dropping.
So
needless to say home-baked bread and chestnuts aren’t the stuff of
metaphors to make me think of home. The tangy smell of dead fish and
seaweed that rise from big rivers, well, that’s another thing.
But viewed from the train window while rolling across the
Rockies, this other river stirred new and unusual feelings –
feelings of adventure and unlikely daring.
Small in comparison to the St. Lawrence, the river raged and
foamed and twisted through the steep rock, tumbled through the rapids,
churned white, and in the moments when it was quiet, flowed with the
colour of the great blue heron.
Six
months later, I stood at the edge of the YMCA swimming pool staring
down at a bright orange kayak bobbing at my feet.
A
classic Canadian winter swirled outside the pool windows and here I
was, in a bathing suit and tucking in my tummy muscles. Vanity, yes,
but also practicality. The kayak was much smaller than I had imagined.
How would I fit into it? And once in, get out?
But
there were more pressing matters.
Malcolm, the kayak instructor, tossed me a black kinky number
to wear. He called it a sprayskirt. It was a skirt like none in my
closet. Tight. Slinky. I tried to squeeze the neoprene material over
my hips. Malcolm waited in full kayak attire, looking almost Scottish,
bare knees showing beneath the hem. Time passed. I finally admitted
defeat and asked for a larger size. By now, the others were sitting on
the deck and shimmying gracefully into their kayaks. They all fit, but
what could I expect? They were men with genetically narrower body
types.
I
imitated the chubby kid in front of me, laid the paddle across the
back of the cockpit, lowered my weight to the deck, leaned on my
paddle and somehow slid my butt from the deck into the kayak.
The boat rocked, but didn’t spill.
I felt smug, even daring. Then Malcolm skirted me in. Pulled
the hem so that it fit snugly over the kayak cockpit.
Not
only was I in, I was sealed in. Malcolm
pointed at the bright yellow loop at the far end of the cockpit and
attached to the sprayskirt. “Pull that if you need to get out,” he
said. His instructions reminded me of the ripcord of a parachute.
The RIP cord. We’ve
all heard stories of the parachute not opening.
I
played bumper cars for most of that first lesson, crashing into the
other kayaks, apologising to the men, smashing into them again,
hitting the pool deck, scaring the lifeguard. Malcolm kayaked over
with two strong strokes and turned my paddle around the other way.
“The power blade faces the water,” he said. “And use your right
hand control grip, it’ll help you handle the offset of the
paddle.”
Yeah,
right.
“Hug
the kayak,” he instructed next. “Put your arms around it, bend at
the waist as if you’re kissing the deck, and roll upside down. Slap
the bottom of the boat three times, and then pull on the loop and
somersault out.”
Yeah,
right again.
But
I did it, rolled over. Slapped the hull like a beaver slapping its
tail against the surface. Tugged that loop. Somersaulted underwater
like an otter. Left the
pool that night feeling the Zen of it all. Hug
the kayak. Be the kayak. Hey, I could do this.
It
was the following week that the parachute didn’t open. I rolled over
and lost my bearings. Forgot
to hug the kayak. Kept reaching for that loop in all the wrong places. Just kept reaching…
Panic
set in, raged through me like that white-water river through the
Rockies. I used my hands to dogpaddle the boat upright. Gasped a bite
of air, tipped back underwater. Tried
again. Another bite of air, then rolled back upside down.
Blindly
reached for that damn rip cord.
So
how much can get thrown your
way, and you still keep your kayak upright?
My
story started with a journey and that’s where it will end. Not on
the train, but another trip a few months after Malcolm flipped my boat
upright. I finished the
pool course, but pushed from my brain and body all thought of
travelling down a river in a kayak.
In
the spring, my mother was lonely so I drove out West to visit her.
The evening I arrived she didn’t get out of bed. I went into
the kitchen to make tea, and that’s when I heard the thud, found her
crumpled on the floor. “Stroke,” the paramedics told me as they
tried to find a hospital that would take her.
What
came next is a blur, intensive care, intravenous, brain scans,
convulsions racking my mother’s body, discussions with doctors about
life and death. But
against all odds, against all predictions, my mother wouldn’t die.
Refused to do what was expected of her.
“There’s the funniest looking little man standing in a
river over there,” she said one day from her hospital bed, peering
into the distance over my shoulder. “Keeps waving for me to join
him, but I’m not crossing that river.”
Probably
Malcolm.
“Is he wearing a skirt?” I asked, but mother had already
drifted back into unconsciousness.
Later
that week, I asked my mother what she wanted to do. My father had died
the year before, and the family house sold.
Mother’s
eyes once again looked over my shoulder into the distance. “I want
to go home,” she said.
“I want to see the St. Lawrence River again.”
Two
months later, still in the hospital, her recovery akin to a roller
coaster ride, she called me on the telephone, her voice small and
despairing. I had already returned to Ontario.
“The doctors say I can’t travel, it’s too dangerous. I
could die on the way, heart failure or a stroke, and Air Canada
won’t risk it either.”
They
had her in restraints, across her waist and her wrists. She had
bruised her face quite badly, falling while getting out of bed against
orders. But I knew what she was doing – trying to gain the muscle
strength to walk again. The
strength she’d need to convince them to let her come home.
They saw it as the belligerence that comes from losing touch
with reality, hallucinating men-sightings in rivers and such.
Mother
had some money left from the estate, but not much. Father worked his
whole life in a factory. They had scrimped and saved in order to make
ends meet for us - their family of five children. Even in their
“golden years,” dining out meant McDonalds, and going shopping
meant buying thrift shop. Mother had a closet full of second-hand
clothes.
But
if she were going to die anyway in the very near future, like the
doctors predicted, for what did she need to save her money?
And
if she were going to die anyway in the very near future, like the
doctors predicted, why not die trying to make the trip home? She had stubbornly not died yet.
Maybe she would live
to see her river again.
“A
personal jet and nursing care on the plane will cost thirty
thousand.” I tested the waters, waiting for her reaction. I had done
the research, knew the figures, but it was a huge amount of money for
her. Much more than my father had made in a year’s wages anytime
throughout his life.
“You’ll
book the jet? You’ll do that for me?”
she said.
There
was something new in her voice. Hope, but also daring.
The thrill of adventure. She would fly home in her own jet. She
knew the risks as much as I did, but chose to take them.
Yes,
I would do that for her. I would do that for me.
I
hung up and made the arrangements. She would fly two days later, an
ambulance taking her to the airport, pilot and plane waiting, her own
nursing staff, an ambulance meeting her when she landed.
Then
I made another call - to a white water kayak outfitter.
Booked
a trip down a river.
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