Form Correction

I sit cross-legged in the bow of our old green Prospector canoe, my bum on a woven cane seat. The canoe bobs lightly in the cold black water near a sloped bank of ancient sedimentary rock. Our red packs are snugged on either side of the centre yoke. John carefully steps into the stern, arranges his fishing rod behind him, and we push off.

Dawn is breaking on this cool May morning at the west end of Pickerel Lake in Quetico Provincial Park. Birdsong erupts from the pine and spruce forests: ovenbirds, yellow-rumped warblers, ruby-crowned kinglets, song sparrows and a northern parula with its distinctive rising glissando. The lake, however, is as still and silent as the night left behind. There's a silver sheen on its wide calm surface. Mist clings to the far shore swaddling a stand of silver birch like cotton wool.

My paddle is maple, honey-toned, John's courtship gift from long ago. My right palm cups the curved grip at the top while my left hand loosely circles the shaft lower down. With my right hand close to my right ear, I bend forward from the hips, simultaneously extending my arm to punch the air on a diagonal across my left shoulder and, stretching my torso, place the paddle's tip in the water about three and a half feet in front of me. The paddle shaft arcs forward. I lean back, steadily pulling the paddle alongside the canoe until the blade is about three feet behind me. The canoe glides forward. At this end of the stroke, I lift the blade out of the water and pivot my right thumb down, which rotates the paddle so that the blade swivels flat and skims the glassy water in its sweep to the bow. The next stroke begins.

For the upteenth time, I visualize the body movements matching a perfect stroke. Back and shoulder muscles lengthen and contract rhythmically, arms and hands glide in a smooth ellipsis, the waist twists slightly, the back stays long. And the sound: a slight 'lup' as the paddle enters the water, then a gurgle from the eddy hugging the blade as it moves back, and finally, as the blade swings forward, a lovely gentle trill of falling water droplets.

I correct my form. I stretched forward too far – my back and shoulders are straining. I notice also that when I punch too hard, the paddle smacks the water upon entry. When I pull backwards too hard, the paddle wobbles and jerks. I notice that I regularly go beyond the point of comfort, rather than staying at the edge, or even before.

As usual, I'm trying too hard. As usual, I'm effortizing, a word I made up to describe a long-standing habit of mine. If I try hard enough, so my thinking goes, eventually I'll reach perfection. If I read enough books, I'll be the perfect student. If I work hard enough, I'll be the perfect employee. If I listen attentively enough, I'll be the perfect coach. If I practise scales long enough, I'll play piano perfectly. If I relax completely enough in love-making, I'll enjoy the perfect orgasm. Go figure that one. If I sit at this computer long enough, I'll carve out a perfect piece of writing.

This effortizing rests on a couple of assumptions. The first holds that perfection is worth achieving. It answers a longing within me to unite with the ideal, to come home to God through beauty. When I take in the scene around me – vast blue sky, calm silver lake, deep green forest, orange and ochre lichen-covered rocks – my heart expands and lightens, infused with a simple, lucid peace. This gift from nature seems to call for a response. I reply by trying to make my paddle strokes graceful, which calls for attention to form and form correction.

I think my first assumption is worth keeping, tuned as it is to a deep love for nature and beauty. It's the second assumption that trips me up. This one claims that by dogged will and effort, I can actually reach perfection.

You'd think that by now, having lived nearly 60 thoroughly human years, I would have seen through this illusion. For no matter how hard I try, how much I effortize, a gap will always exist between my form and perfect form. Practice makes perfect, right? And the goal is to close the gap, right? Not necessarily, suggests Huy Lam, a martial arts practitioner and a fellow Integral Coach^TM. According to Huy, the gap between current form and ideal can also reveal insights into how you learn: what you attune to; what you hang on to, what you let go of; how you receive and incorporate feedback, given by yourself or by another; and even how you trust yourself and trust beyond yourself.¹

The trick is to stay quiet and explore the gap's territory, rather than push blindly forward. So when I loosen my grip on my assumption about effortizing, and focus on the gap, some interesting questions pop up. On what, or on who, do I base my standard of perfection? Am I doing this just to look good? What if my ideal self-image is no more than a cold marble statue on a pedestal? What would I actually gain – or lose – by reaching perfection? What would I gain or lose by not reaching it? Could it be that I'm not meant to be perfect? That no-one is? Could it be that I can be flawed, imperfect, and still worthwhile?

“If you're perfect, I can't relate to you,” a friend observed recently. “If you're perfect, you're set apart. When you accept your imperfections, it shows me that you're human – just like me.”

The mist has cleared. The rising sun lays down a shimmering gold path from the horizon right to the prow of our canoe. The air smells like clean sheets fresh off the line. A slight breeze teases the lake, furling its skin. I back off on the effortizing. Some of my paddle strokes feel sweetly even; others chop and splash. It's a perfectly beautiful morning.

1Huy brought forward these ideas during a workshop conducted in 2009 by Integral Coaching Canada.

The weekend that changed my life

In 1992, I went snowshoeing for the first time in my life. It was Valentine's Day weekend. A friend at work had invited me to join a local hiking group for a snowshoeing outing in the Haliburton Hills north of Toronto. I had never snowshoed before, but Ron assured me there was nothing to it. I was 40 years old. I had been divorced and on my own for nearly 10 years, and during that time had discovered the pleasures of being outdoors.

Leaving work on Friday, Ron and I climbed into his Jeep. We picked up his wife Anita at their home in the east end of Toronto. As the winter afternoon light dimmed, we drove to our destination, a camp tucked into the shadows of the Haliburton Hills.

The cabins were rustic: pine veneer panelled walls, twin beds covered in red wool blankets, nubbly foam pillows, blue floral sheets, thin white towels. We had brought our own food. About 20 people had signed up for the weekend. That Friday night, the group gathered for the ritual opening party, held in the largest cabin. It had a small living room and kitchen, with some weathered sofas and chairs arranged in front of a small wood stove. Beer and wine flowed as we munched our way through pretzels and chips and chattered to one another.

About an hour or so into the party, the door opened. Two young men stepped into the cabin, stamping freshly fallen snow from their boots. The clamour subsided briefly as we all turned to look at them. One was tall and lean, with straight sandy hair and a slightly stooped frame. The other was a few inches shorter, not quite as thin, with thick black hair and wire-rimmed glasses. His smile was soft and shy. “Hi Ian and John!” someone shouted. The chatter resumed.

Ron and I were standing on the far side of the room, debating the merits of different brands of hiking boots. I cocked my head towards the door. “The dark-haired one,” I said. “Very handsome.” Ron looked over, turned back to me and took a swig from his Labatt's Blue. “Too young,” he pronounced. We went back to boots.

Saturday morning dawned clear and cold. The sky arched over the hills like a seamless blue tent. We packed sandwich lunches, snacks and thermoses of hot tea. I strapped on my rented beaver-tail snowshoes, and fell in line behind the others. To walk, you had to swing your legs out to each side to accommodate the width of the snowshoes. They felt big and awkward, clattering on the trail of packed snow like clunky, over-sized boots. Up ahead, a couple of people stepped off the trail into deep fresh snow. I did the same. The clattering transformed into springy, padded bouncing. I felt as if I was walking on clouds. Off trail, we bushwhacked through dense sapling groves, slid down snow-covered rocks, and used our snowshoes like shovels to dig steps into a steep incline. It was magic.

Mid-morning, we stopped for a snack break. I pulled out a plastic bag filled with raisins, cashews, almonds and a generous sprinkling of brightly coloured chocolate Smarties. I found myself in a circle with Too Young next to me. He was wearing a rich purple zip pullover on top of dark blue wind pants. His black hair was damp and spiky. He had hazel eyes.

“Would you like some Gorp?” I held out the plastic bag. Too Young – whose name was John – thanked me, and then carefully picked out a dozen Smarties. I twinkled at him.

That evening, we all trooped into the main cabin again for a communal supper of chili, bread and wine. I sat down on one of the sofas, and John slid next to me. We talked about our work, his as a software designer, mine as a freelance writer and facilitator. He was passionate about the outdoors, and had led hiking and canoeing trips while at university. He was 26.

The next day, we snowshoed together. A surge of playfulness swept over us. We chased each other on the snow, galumphing on the snowshoes. I threw snowballs at him. He dumped me into a snowbank. He ate all the Smarties from my Gorp.

The afternoon ended. It was time to head back to the city. I knocked on the door of John and Ian's cabin to say goodbye. He asked for my phone number. I kissed him on the cheek. On the drive home, I didn't talk much, and floated in a pleasant bath of memories. I had enjoyed myself. John was sweet and cute. But too young, of course. I returned to work the next day and completely forgot about him.

One Saturday morning about a month later, I was lying on the sofa, my nose in a book. The phone rang. It was John. Would I be interested in going out for a walk down by the lake one night that week?

And so began what was for me an incongruous courtship. I was too old; he was too young. I felt strongly attracted to him, but never thought of him as a possible long-term partner. I kept my heart light and detached and told my friends I was having a fling with a younger man.

John and I saw one another regularly. We spent winter weekends snowshoeing or cross-country skiing. When the weather turned milder, we hiked the Bruce Trail east of Toronto, listening to hawks screaming in the maple forests. The following summer, John introduced me to canoeing in Algonquin Park. I learned how to paddle, how to stern using a J-stroke, and finally, how to get out of a canoe without falling into the water yet again. In the fall, we spent weekends hiking in Killarney, or cycling on Manitoulin Island.

Winter returned. We went winter camping, and I learned how to build a quinsy – a sleeping cave out of hard packed snow. We had been dating for more than a year. We both felt comfortable and easy with one another. My girlfriends teased me, “Oh, he's just a friend, is he?” In early March of 1994, John and I flew to Thunder Bay to spend a long weekend skiing with his university friends in a cross-country ski race. The evening after the race, after all the friends had gone, we lay in bed talking about the future. John said he was considering travelling to Europe. Suddenly I envisioned life without him. My heart shrank. It was then that I realized that Too Young had carved a room in my heart.

And, as it turned out, I had settled into John's heart as well. He never did board a plane for Europe. Instead, that summer we rented a house together, and a year later were married.

The unwanted hair wars

When I grew into teenage years, my body changed in wondrous and terrible ways. The tiny nubs on my chest bloomed into soft white breasts. Hair grew grew dark and wiry on my legs, dark and curly in secret places. Pimples splotched my face. I squeezed them regularly, even though my father cautioned me to leave them alone. My mother, preoccupied with her long hours of nursing shift work and the looming debt of the farm, told me absent-mindedly that washing my face thoroughly would get rid of the pimples. I scrubbed furiously. To my horror, the pimples broke and bled, leaving a field of tiny reddish-black scabs speckling my face.

But the worst thing about puberty was my mustache. My upper lip was blessed with thick down that began to darken as I crossed into teen years. I was mortified. Having a mustache put me squarely into the category of “ugly girl”. That, combined with a weak chin, caused me to wince each time I looked in the mirror. And look I did, staring often at that face of mine, at the pimples, the weak chin, the mustache. Each time I despaired. I felt so ugly. Each time I searched for something redeeming.

I settled on my eyebrows. They rose above my dark brown eyes, thick and lustrous. I plucked them meticulously, carving them into a full smooth line. Secretly, I imagined myself winning a beauty contest in our high school: “Mary Lou van Schaik, proud recipient of the Most Beautiful Eyebrows award.”

Walking down the grey terrazzo-tiled floors in our high school, past rows of dull brown lockers, I held my head high. My eyebrows sailed ahead of the rest of my face, perfectly groomed and arched. Mentally, I wore an invisible face veil, praying that students and teachers alike would look only at the upper half of my face.

I remember ordering a home electrologist kit from the Simpsons-Sears catalogue. It arrived in a plastic case, with an instruction booklet which I found difficult to follow. I was too embarrassed to ask my father for help. After a week, I returned it. Later, I took refuge in bleaching creams and eventually weekly trips to the Diana Salon on Queen Street in Toronto. There I joined other women in the waiting room, all of us sitting with our faces bent, our eyes downcast. One by one, we were ushered into a room divided into work stalls, each stall separated from the other by a white hospital curtain. The sessions consisted of 15 minutes of torture, as a technician in a white coat poked an electric needle into a pore on my upper lip, pressed a foot pedal, and a jolt of sharp stinging pain zapped the offending hair. The procedure often left tiny burn marks. I bore the pain stoically, fed by an image of a hair-free face. After countless years, the shadow on my upper lip faded. Surprisingly, the pain was worth it. I felt normal, even liberated.

The decades have passed. Now well into middle age, I contend with half a dozen chin hairs and a slight darkening on my upper lip. My mustache no longer bothers me. Instead, my beauty fixation has returned to my eyebrows. About three or four years ago, I noticed the brown hairs were being replaced at an alarming rate by white ones. For a long time, I plucked out each invading white hair. Lately it's become a losing battle – there are just too many of them. “Accept yourself,” I told myself, and vowed to leave my whitening brows alone.

But old habits die hard. I actually love plucking those sturdy white hairs. It reminds me of those earlier days squeezing pimples. Such a satisfying feeling to rid the body of this or that imperfection.

I fell into temptation. Even though I promised I would not pluck, I looked in the mirror and a crop of white hairs laughed and teased me. Come get us, they taunted. One evening last week, I reached into my cosmetic basket, which holds dusty relics from earlier years: a bottle of foundation that probably should be thrown out, some old red lipstick, a case of mauve and grey eyeshadow, two pairs of nail clippers, an eyebrow brush and my trusty tweezers. The nail clippers and tweezers straddle the basket's rim, within easy reach.

Unlike the brown hairs, the white ones grow in straight and bristly, like pine trees in a forest of maples. I looked carefully at two or three, took aim with my tweezers, and missed. Out came half a dozen regular brown eyebrow hairs. I tried again. Another miss, and six or seven more brown hairs lay curled on the tips of the tweezers. I began plucking fiercely, picking up speed, assuming that by going faster, my error rate would decrease. Wrong assumption. More brown hairs fell to the sink and still the crafty white ones stood out defiantly. I finally parted all the brown hairs, like sedges in a swamp, isolated one white one, positioned the tweezers firmly on it and yanked. Out it came – along with a cluster of fledgling brown ones.

There was now a rather large gaping hole in my eyebrow line. I looked like I was suffering from a minor skin disease. I dug into the cosmetic basket and drew out the eyebrow brush. No use – no matter if I brushed up, down or sideways, the hole remained.

So now my right eyebrow has a miniature clear-cut patch in its forest. Meanwhile the left eyebrow boasts a flock of strong white rebels. The hairs refuse to lay down neatly and the brows look lopsided. I may have won the mustache war, but have definitely lost on the eyebrow front. I'm leaving them alone.

Our Christmas Creche

When we were growing up, our Christmas tree often went up on December 24^rd, just before the day itself, and always came down on January 6^th, the Feast of the Magi. My father would choose a five-foot spruce from the grove that marked the boundary of our farm. Once home, he stood the tree in a bucket of wet sand set in the middle of a low wooden platform made from old two-by-fours and plywood, and secured the tree by wires into a corner of our living room. The tangy smell of spruce needles spiced our excitement.

Dad hauled the large box of Christmas decorations up the basement stairs. He pulled out a square green and red checked cloth, snugged one edge close to the base of the tree and draped the rest over the platform. Tangled clusters of lights were unwound and tested. The bulbs were old and soft-nosed. Years of use had worn off bits of paint to reveal tiny filaments blazing through the scratched blue, red, green and yellow glass. The decorations were wrapped in yellowed tissue paper. We children were allowed to help, but only if we were very careful and very quiet. Shiny gold and silver balls threw back contorted images of our faces when we peered at them up close. Bright blue and red metal balls, light as breaths, twirled and sparkled on the tree branches. There were a couple of Nutcracker toy soldiers, smartly decked out in red and black uniforms, some blown glass snowflakes, a dozen twisted strips of shiny tin, and a silver foil garland that zigzagged around the tree. An eight-pointed gold star leaned precariously from the top, lit from behind by a tiny yellow bulb.

Dad went back to the basement, returning with a large flat cardboard box. He placed it carefully on the sofa and lifted the cover. The Christmas creche lay hidden, the plaster statues wrapped in newsprint. My father forbade us to touch them. The creche had been in my mother's family when she was a child. It had survived the ocean crossing when my parents emigrated from Holland in 1950. Dad was determined that the pieces would not fall prey to our clumsy and careless clutches, unlike the blue and white china that had so often slipped from our hands and had soon been replaced by turquoise melmac.

My father unwrapped each statue and wiped away last year's dust with a rag. As each piece was placed under the tree, the Christmas story came to life. Mary knelt beside the manger, her light brown hair partly covered with a cream shawl. Her blue robes were edged in orange, her hands joined in prayer. Joseph knelt across from her, his dull brown robes matching his beard. Close by, a chocolate brown cow and a long-eared black mule stretched their necks toward the manger. A short distance away, two shepherds bent forward, intent on finding out what lay underneath the shocking star. One carried a lamb balanced on his shoulder, the other held a crooked staff in one hand and flung back his dark green cloak with the other. Three curly-haired grey sheep grazed on their tiny grass bases. Far back, half hidden by the drooping branches, the three wise men marched slowly across the cloth desert. Two looked like Bedouin: swarthy faces set off by glittering eyes and pointed black beards, their heads wrapped in crimson turbans, gold rings dangling from their ears. They wore cloaks, short pleated trousers and pointed shoes. One carried an incense burner, the other an urn. The third Magi was dressed in sable robes, a jewelled crown circling his head. Kneeling, he held a box, presumably filled with gold. Trailing the procession was a servant leading our favourite piece, a proud camel bearing a polished saddle.

And in the crib, on a bed of dull ceramic straw, lay baby Jesus, more the size of a four-year old than a newborn infant. His sturdy legs and feet protruded from a short cream tunic with a brown sash. His arms were stretched out, palms up. His dark eyes gazed out of a calm and unsmiling face. Directly above, an angel swung from a low branch and looked down adoringly.

As Dad unwrapped the last of the pieces, my siblings and I fell silent, our wrangling corked for a few moments. One of us stretched out a hand to pet the cow. “Blijf af!” barked my father. “Keep off!”

When he turned his back, we slyly slid a finger along the cloth to touch a sheep. We were sorely tempted to stroke the camel's long brown neck – but that was risking a sharper yell and a clap on the ears. For the moment, it was enough to sit quietly, watching our tall stern father, weary from endless farm chores, adjust the placement of each piece so that it matched a timeless order, the only order in the world for him, the order of his faith.

My father has been dead for more than 20 years, but the creche survives, now part of the Christmas tradition for my brother David and his family. I lingered over it during our visit this year. Mary's lipstick has been refreshed in coral, to match the edge of her orange cloak. One of the Bedouin kings bears a scar around his neck, evidence of vital repair after accidental decapitation. The mule is minus half an ear while the camel stoically endures a hole in its plaster neck. But the Magi's eyes still glitter, and baby Jesus still directs his impassive gaze on the world.