I booked a kayaking trip down the river for our family
vacation this year. Small issue. I am completely afraid of rivers. Rivers will
kill you. Currents will sweep you down to the inevitable dam that is always
there and you will drown. You’ll get sucked into a whirlpool and drown. Your
kayak will tip over and you will drown. You will be crushed on the rocks in the
rapids and drown. Fish will attack you and eat you and you will drown. I know,
completely rational reasons to avoid rivers, right? But for real, rivers scare
me to death (if you couldn’t tell.) You can’t see what’s under the water (at
least not in an Iowa river) – there are tree branches and rocks. There are
scary fish – well, all fish are scary – but river ones are ugly and have teeth
(they do!) So scheduling a kayaking trip down a river made perfect sense. But I
knew my kids would like it and I like the IDEA of kayaking – other than the
tipping over, not being able to steer, drowning and dying parts. Super glad I
signed us up. Deep breaths…
I informed the main guide that I was deathly afraid of
rivers but hey, it will be alright, right? Right?! I’m sure she was very
excited to get to work with someone who was barely hanging on to her hysteria.
Everyone was excited for this trip! It was the moment and I got into my kayak
and pushed off from the edge and immediately started breathing fast – 4.5 miles
of this? Can it be over now? And where are my kids? Oh my gosh I am leading
them to their doom on our vacation!
I started paddling with a mission. I wanted to keep up with
the guide but not go in front of her because I didn’t know where I was going.
(Um, it’s a river – there was only one way…) I snapped at Moose when his kayak
would accidently bump into me – didn’t he know how hard I was trying to have
fun here and he was freaking me out! Thankfully he knows that when I am scared,
I get a little irrational. In his helpful way, he pointed out a rock in the
river to avoid. Huh? I don’t see a rock at all. It’s just brown water everywhere
and the next thing I knew, I was stuck on this rock I never saw coming. Stuck.
Everyone else was in front of me, going around a bend, and I knew, this was my
time to die, on the Skunk River in Story County, Iowa. Kind of anticlimactic,
but we can’t always choose how we go. I hoped my kids would remember me fondly,
as I frantically worked my paddle to dislodge me from this damned rock. I
almost tipped over and decided, no, I would just sit here in this kayak for the
rest of my life and die a slow death of starvation (the water was maybe 2 feet
deep here) versus being eaten alive by fish when I fell into the water. And
then, I felt it. The water started to shift my kayak and I was glided off the
rock naturally. Somehow I had survived this near death experience and despite
my initial scream when I lodged onto the rock, I tried to nonchalantly catch up
with the rest of the group, cool because, hey everyone knows how to get off
rocks when they get stuck, right? No big deal. Where is my paper bag to breathe
into?
Then our guide announces that there were “ripples” up ahead.
Ripples?! Oh, like tiny mini rapids she says – like its no big deal. WHAT? I
barely survived a rock in the water that I couldn’t see and now we were going
through class 10-Z rapids? (I have no idea if rapids have ratings but 10-Z
seems like it would be pretty serious.) I watch my Squirrel just shoot right through
without issue. Great, I’ve got this – if he can do it, so can I. I survived the
boulder attack in the water earlier, I can do this. And then the Moose gets
stuck. Then my guides get stuck. And I’m in full out panic mode inside and
because I can’t help it, I hit both my guides’ canoe and Moose’s kayak. I am
helpless. I feel the water rushing around me and know that no, THIS is actually
my time to die. I feel my kayak start to move and then it flips me around and I
am now going down the ripples backwards. I am going to go to my death
peacefully I thought so I just stopped paddling and let the river do its thing.
Within a few seconds though, I was able to turn around and face the right way
again, grinning. I had let go and just let nature take its course and I came
through great. I was beyond proud of myself, ignoring the complete meltdown I
had had on the inside seconds before – no one saw it so it doesn’t count.
After that I stopped paddling frantically to finish the
river and instead just floated and took it all in. I love nature. I love seeing
my kids in nature. We were surrounded by trees. The weather was amazing. I was
thankful for this amazing moment. And it was so quiet, it was hard not to
relate this experience to life.
Up until my husband filed for divorce, I could not imagine
my life without him. Our marriage wasn’t good but I always thought it would get
better. If I made more money. If I could afford for him to get a new truck.
Once the kids moved out and we had more time together. If I could make him
happy, he would be happy to be married to me. I worked so hard because life
without him was unfathomable. Was I happy? No, I wasn’t but I clung to the hope
that the season we were going through was just that – a season. I didn’t know
that my marriage ended long before he filed papers. Immediately I was dropped
into a river of sorts – a place I had tried to avoid with all my heart. I
couldn’t see the hidden dangers under the surface – many had shown their faces
in the past year and were terrible surprises. I couldn’t steer the direction my
life was taking – I was going to be a single mom no matter what I wanted. I was
scared to death and didn’t want to fall out of my kayak and drown as I
navigated this new river of life I found myself in.
I didn’t know what else to do so I paddled. I paddled so
hard. I did all of the homework my lawyer gave me. I found therapists for the
kids. I shored up my finances as best I could. I continued doing my work in
therapy. I cried to my friends. I worked to find my voice – just my voice as I
was speaking for just me, not us, now. I had been an “us” for so long that I
didn’t know how to even be a “me.” And just like the ripples, life pushed me
through and now I was on the other side. Here I was at one year after the
divorce, having this amazing vacation with my loves, and now it was time to
just relax and float a little bit.
What I learned on the river kayaking and in the past year is
that I’m not always going to know what is underneath the surface of the murky
water. I’m going to get surprised, scared and stuck sometimes. But I learned that
I can get myself off the rocks when I get stuck. I may end up going backwards
for a bit and have no idea what I am doing, but I’ll figure it out. I can do
scary things. I can navigate this life as a single mom and I can navigate a
river that frightens me. And that makes me breathe a little easier, relax a
little more and enjoy the ride as I float down this life with my loves.
