Hello, sweet baby

I've never been a mother. Big sister, yes. As the eldest of seven children, I spent much of my early adolescence washing diapers, feeding the 'little kids', and generally making sure that they didn't kill each other. As a result, my relationship with babies has usually been somewhat utilitarian.

But from time to time, a baby's charm bores a hole right through my heart.

The other day, I was standing in line at Pipolinka's, our village bakery. A family was eating lunch at the one of the round café tables lining the wall. Two young, dark-haired children munched on croissants. Their mother sat breast-feeding their infant brother. Their father stood in line ahead of me. He wore wrap-around sunglasses and a fitted black hat on his head. His face was tanned and unshaven, and sprouted a little tuft of beard underneath his lower lip. While the children remained eating, the mother rose from the table and, with the baby still in her arms, joined him in line. She was dressed in loose layers of sage and tan cotton. Her steady green eyes were set far apart in a wide Slavic face. Her brown hair was roughly cut as if for expediency rather than style.

She hooked her young baby underneath her arm, turning him outwards so that he was facing me. The baby wore an orange and purple jumper. His smooth, plump legs and feet were bare. He looked at me, then grinned widely, displaying toothless gums and a soft pink tongue. I grinned back and smooched the air. Giggling, the baby jiggled up and down, arms and feet pumping. We fell into the bright blue pool of each other's smiles.

Philippe the baker came out from behind the counter, wiping his hands on his apron. He leaned his thin face towards the man. They exchanged a loose hug. He greeted the mother warmly, then extended his arms to take the baby. As the child lay in his arms, Philippe bent his head and snuffled its scalp, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. He gently kissed the baby's head. I wanted to do the same: to drink in that tender, dizzying scent of innocence and joy.

For Huda, and her baby, Kareem.

Finding our piece of heaven

 “This land looks great!” I beamed at John. We leaned against our car, parked on a road deep in the Caledon Hills north of Toronto. We were facing a one-acre lot for sale. It boasted uniform rows of planted red pine, a scrubby field next to it, a low stagnant swamp next to that, and an army of hydro pylons marching across the fields beyond. John took his time replying and then shook his head, repeating what he'd been saying to me for the past year, “I think we can do better.”

I sighed. Our search for a piece of land had hit another dead end. And yet, I knew that he was right. Did I really want to live right next to a swamp?

We climbed back into the car and shuffled through the real estate listings. Nothing else in this area. It was 1995. John and I were newly-weds, my second marriage, his first. We were renting a house in the heart of Toronto where John worked as a software designer and I as a communications consultant. No longer a spring chicken, my hen-like nature fixated on finding a nest. John had long wanted to design and build his own home. We both shared the dream of living in the country.

Almost every weekend, we drove north of the city, flipping through a sheaf of real estate listings in search of our Holy Grail – one or two acres of land. We had talked at length about our criteria: John wanted trees. I wanted hills and a long view to the west. Not too many neighbours. Lots of space. Pitch-black skies strewn with stars. We wanted to be well into farming country, away from the noise, heat and congestion that Toronto living couldn't escape.

So far, no piece of land met all the criteria within reasonable price and commuting distance from the city. We found ourselves upping our budget and our commuting time as we roamed farther and farther afield. Of the dozens of listings we tracked down and looked at, I had been ready to buy at least half of them. John had always put on the brakes. “I think we can do better,” he would say. “Let's keep looking.”

Then there was cost. It seemed that any land under $100,000 – and we are talking here of one acre – was bound to be swamp, or a flat field with not a tree in sight, or a lot squeezed into a development of monster homes.

One fall weekend we broke our regular routine and drove to Wakefield to visit David and Maureen. For more than 20 years, I had been making the trek from Toronto to Wakefield to visit this couple, two of my oldest friends. During the mid-70s, Maureen and I had lived across the street from one another in Ottawa, when we were on our starter husbands. Over the years, we kept in touch regularly. For me, a weekend with Maureen and David was a welcome retreat from Toronto. I would make the six-hour drive daydreaming about living in the country. As I crossed the Ottawa River, heading north into Quebec, I could feel contentment settling around me like a warm shawl. Inevitably, every time I neared Chelsea and saw the horizon undulating into the Gatineau Hills, the phrase “my beloved hills” would fall from my lips. And now John was also a firm friend of David and Maureen and of the many other friends we had made in the area.

It took another eight months or so before the penny dropped. One Sunday afternoon in the early summer of 1996 we were heading back to Toronto after yet another unfruitful search in the Barrie area. Our car was one of thousands streaming like lemmings towards the brown band of smog glued to the Toronto skyline. It was a sticky afternoon. Shimmering heat waves bounced off the highway. We closed the car windows and turned on the air-conditioning. Surrounded by concrete, noise and speeding cars, a thought floated into my mind like a leaf in a still pool: what about Wakefield? Now, at this time, Canada was in the throes of separation anxiety. In Quebec, sovereignists had come into power led by the charismatic Lucien Bouchard. The news was full of the upcoming autumn referendum which would ask Quebecers to choose between leaving Canada (the Yes side) or staying (the No side). Support for the sovereignists had been growing, and the threat of separation shifted from a pipe dream to an alarming possibility. John and I weighed the pros and cons of living in Quebec if the separatists were successful. What was the worst that could happen? For us, closing the borders between Quebec and Ontario, or some policy that prevented us from working in Ontario, would be disastrous. And yet, how likely were these scenarios? Not very, we determined. Well, what about friends? Ironically, my closest friends lived in Wakefield, John's closest friends Ian and Jen had recently moved to Wakefield, and my mother lived in nearby Ottawa. If we did move to the area, we would find ourselves among good friends in a hospitable community. And bottom line, a big draw to finding land in Quebec was that prices were about one-tenth Ontario prices. We decided to expand our search.

One weekend in July we drove the back roads around Wakefield, gazing at farms, fields, and hills covered in trees. We roamed a farm of 150 acres on the Pritchard road, but the house was in a low rocky field, and there was no view. Further north, near Venosta, 50 acres of forest – including a lake – tempted us but the mosquitoes were mighty and the land too flat. We returned to Toronto slightly downcast, but determined to keep looking.

In August, I spent a week house-sitting for other good Wakefield friends, John and Annick while they spent a weekend with their family at a cottage. My John came up from Toronto and we set out early Saturday morning to explore the countryside. We found ourselves on Chemin de la Montagne, about seven kilometers east of Wakefield. A range of large old forested hills flanked a valley of green fields. We saw houses perched on top of the hills and took a rough, steep-climbing road to investigate. There were dozens of lots for sale, some of them giving out to magnificent westward views. My heart leapt – surely one of these would be the perfect match for us. But John shook his head firmly. Now what was the problem? The road. Not only was it far too steep, deep gullies and bone-rattling washboard could only mean trouble. “Think of winter,” John insisted. “Driving this road would be a nightmare.” He also pointed out that the lots were small, and fairly close together. Even though few homes had been built, John imagined the scene 10 years down the road, and saw a crush of 'estate' homes shouldering each other. No. “We can do better,” he said.

We drove back down the steep, unwelcome road and turned north on Chemin de la Montagne. About half a kilometer along, on the right, we caught sight of a hand-painted sign nailed to a tree trunk: Four acres. Private sale. And a phone number.

We stopped the car, got out and looked at the crowd of trees defending the property. Lots of trees. Hilly land. A long, westward view over open fields. A country road. Close to Wakefield, but no encroaching neighbours. No swamp. All right, hydro pylons in the opposite fields, but far away.

“Why don't we take a closer look?” proposed John. A deep ditch, filled with a kind of robust, glossy three-leafed plant, separated us from the land.

“Is this poison ivy?” I asked.

“Dunno,” shrugged John.

“Oh, probably not,” I said, my eagerness to explore cancelling out any concern.

In our T-shirts, shorts and sandals, we waded through the plants, and on hands and knees, clambered up the steep bank of the ditch. The land rose steadily and we walked among maple and oak, beech and birch. A small creek ran down the hillside. The trees murmured in the breeze. We climbed the hill and found a small clearing high up. The views were long and peaceful in the country quiet.

Now it was John who said, “This has possibilities. I can see building here.” I forced my face to stay calm. “Let's ask David and Maureen for their opinion,” I said. They had built their house on a hilly lot on a back street in Wakefield. We called them, and agreed to meet at the land after lunch.

Meanwhile, we had found a beaten-down animal path that gave ready access to the land. When our friends arrived, we all crossed the ditch on this path and stood amid the trees.

“Oh, you can definitely build on this,” said David. “It's not as steep as the lot we built on.”

Just then, a car passed, slowed down, and stopped at the For Sale sign. A couple peered through the car window, looking intently at the sign. A slight quiver ran through me. Other people were interested in this property! About five minutes later, another car zoomed along, slowed down and stopped – and again, the couple in this car stared closely at the sign and seemed to take down its information. I threw a worried look John's way. Were we going to lose this land to someone else? A third car came by and the same thing happened. I couldn't contain my anxiety any longer. “Does anyone have a cell phone?” I shouted. “We need to put an offer in – right now!”

David was standing on the roadside when the fourth car rolled up. He asked the driver what was going on. “We're in a car rally, and this is one of the navigation points,” came the reply.

Even so, I wasn't taking chances. As soon as we got back to Annick and John's place, I insisted on calling the phone number listed on the For Sale sign. Two days later, we signed the offer and closed the deal. At last we had found our piece of heaven. And our down-payment? The worst case of poison ivy we have ever experienced. But it was worth every itch and scratch.

My first paying job

The rows of green plants stretched their long arms down the garden. Each row was about 50 feet long and there must have been at least 20 rows in the acre and a half that made up my family's farm garden. Peas and beans, broccoli and cauliflower, kale and cabbage, corn and strawberries – most grown from seed, or in the case of the strawberries, from small plants, all of it feeding a family of nine through the four seasons.

In the fall, after the first frost, my father dug up the garden with his old rototiller. He hauled the rusty machine from one of the sheds hugging the barn, frog-marched it to the garden, and then spent the day walking up and down the length of the garden, ploughing under the past season's producers, now limp and black from the frost. The asparagus patch was left to its natural demise, while the strawberry plants were covered with a protective layer of straw. Snow soon blanketed the dark earth. During the long winter months, my father studied the seed catalogues, consulted with my mother, and then, in February, ordered the new seeds.

Spring tiptoed to our farm, fresh and green. When the wet snow finally disappeared and the soil had dried, my father and the rototiller re-appeared in the garden. The new furrows curled back, dark and crumbly. Earthworms squirmed through the clods of overturned earth, finding their way back into their tunnels. Seagulls from some distant unknown lake flew in to feast on the worms.

One warm spring Saturday, Dad organized the annual planting day with the the 'big kids' – the four oldest children. After a breakfast of porridge, we put on our work clothes – navy twill pants, plaid cotton shirts, black rubber boots trimmed in orange, and red baseball caps. We trooped to the garden and took our stations alongside the rows, which Dad had earlier marked out with pegs and string. Each of us was responsible for planting a different row, thereby reducing the likelihood of squabbling.

Our first job was to trench the rows. Dad handed out hoes. We drew shallow wavering lines in the earth, trying our best to follow the path of the string marking the row. I opened my package of pea seeds. Holding a handful of seeds in my palm, I closed my fist and then carefully rolled a seed at a time past my index finger and thumb into the waiting trench. “Not too close, not too far apart,” cautioned Dad, before turning to my brother Peter who held the package of carrot seeds.

We bent to our work, dropping the seeds into their rows, hoeing them over with a thin layer of earth, and patting the soil firm with our palms. Each planted row earned us five cents. This may seem like pittance today, but back then, in the late '50s, five cents bought a lot of candy.

Tending the garden was the source of our first income. The standard increment was five cents: five cents for hoeing a row, the same for weeding strawberries. When the plump red berries appeared, ten cents for each 4-quart basket. The exceptions were the cucumbers, potatoes and corn later in the season – these commanded 25 cents per bushel basket.

In the warming days of May and June, we spent hours in the garden, rucking the soil with our hoes and slapping at the mosquitoes. Dad kept the earth between the rows weed-free with weekly forays of the rototiller. Occasionally, he would let one of my brothers drive the machine, but always with an attentive eye. Unless you grasped the handles firmly, the machine would gallop away on its own and lurch drunkenly from the path, shredding the young plants.

The first vegetables to be harvested were asparagus and lettuce, followed by tender green peas. Ten cents for a four-quart basket of peas. Our dilemma: yield to the temptation of gobbling the sweet and crunchy peas, or, earn more money – and more quickly – by resolutely placing each pod in the basket. Of course, we couldn't resist snacking, and the path was soon littered with empty pea pods while neon green pea scrapings lined our fingernails.

In late July, we headed over to our neighbour's farm to earn more cash raspberry picking. Mrs. Barsevski's front field boasted row after row of raspberry bushes. When the fruit ripened, it had to be picked quickly while at its peak. Mrs. Barsevski, her Slavic head wrapped in a blue gingham kerchief led us to various rows, each with a tower of empty veneer pint baskets at the end. “Eat as much as you want,” she said to us in her thickly-accented English. I picked until my pint basket was level full with berries and brought it to her. “No, no!” she laughed, taking the basket out of my hands. “More, more! The peoples, they want full basket!” She proceeded to add berries, until the basket looked like a small mountain of red. We loved picking for Mrs. Barsevski. Not only could we eat as many raspberries as our bellies could hold, but she paid us 10 cents a pint – twice as much as we got at home. And she always supplemented the fruit with slices of freshly-baked apple strudel.

As the summer lengthened into August, beans overran our garden. We could barely keep up with their ferocious sprint. My mother took charge of freezing the vegetables. We topped and tailed green and yellow beans for hours, blanched batches in pots of boiling water, then packed the beans in plastic bags and layered them in the large chest freezer that stood against the wainscotted pine wall in the summer kitchen. When the beans got older and tougher, we put them through a mandoline slicer, which made them more palatable, and again, froze bags and bags. I can't recall that we got paid for this part of our family food production – I suspect my parents considered freezing vegetables a regular part of our chores.

Autumn once more, and with it, the end of the harvest. No use hoeing anymore – Dad would soon set the rototiller to destroying the spent plants. The freezer was full of layer upon layer of frozen beans, corn, peas and kale. Shredded cabbage sat in the stoneware crock, fermenting into tart sauerkraut. Jars of dill pickles lined the cellar shelves.

I shook my piggy bank, grown heavy with the summer's crop of nickels, dimes and quarters. Its maraca beat was music to my ears.

On meeting Beethoven's Fifth

In grade 10, at Mount Forest District High School, I was part of a four-some along with Gwen, Lois, and Henny. In the mosaic of our class, we were the 'serious' ones: plain-faced, studious, intense. Walking through the school yard together, we noticed how funny Mr. Gilbert was, how sophisticated Miss Taylor was. While George was the nicest boy in the class, Larry was the cutest. We drilled each other on Latin verbs and chemistry formulas, and wondered what questions would be on the next exam. We looked over enviously at vivacious Deirdre and pretty Wendy, who always seemed to be laughing and flirting with the circle of boys that constantly flocked around them.

Then a new girl joined our class. Her name was Pam Russner. She and her family had moved to Mount Forest from Provo, Utah. Her mother cut hair out of their home. Her father did some kind of agricultural engineering. They were Mormons, even more exotic to me than the handful of Jews in our small town in rural Ontario. I had never met a Mormon before.

Pam was strange and fascinating. While the rest of us spent hours arranging our permed hair, or backcombing our beehives, Pam wore her straight blond hair in a simple Dutch boy's bob. She didn't seem to care about clothes – or boys. She loped through the school yard like a wolf, body canted forward, always slightly ahead of us. She didn't speak a lot, but when she did, she said exactly what she thought – even to the teachers, which thrilled and shocked we four timid girls.

Pam taught Lois and I to fence, lending us the equipment – the black mesh face-masks, heavy white jackets and knickers, the padded gloves and slim dangerous epees. She demonstrated the lunge and riposte, the parry and thrust. We practised on the school's auditorium stage, sheltered from view behind the heavy grey house curtains. Lois and I faced each other a short distance apart, each foot deliberately placed at a 45-degree angle on the strip of masking tape Pam had laid down on the oak boards. When Pam declared, “En garde!”, we bent our hips and thighs into a half-squat, crooked our left arm and hoisted it behind our shoulder, and thrust forward our right hand which held the epee. Pam checked our body positions, stood back and ordered, “Fence!” We shuffled back and forth in a crab-like dance, waving the epees and poking at each other. Afterwards, back in our pleated grey wool skirts and white cotton blouses, we swished through the school halls, feeling slightly exotic ourselves.

One fall weekend as the maples were turning orange and red, Pam invited the four of us to a sleepover at her house. Her parents owned a ranch bungalow high on a hill in the countryside outside Mount Forest. This was a rare occasion for me: I looked forward to it all week with growing excitement. One of our parents dropped us off on the Saturday morning. Pam met us at the front door, and immediately ushered us into her mother's home salon, a small many-windowed room looking out on the garden. A flowered divan nestled against one wall next to a green leatherette seat topped by a cone-shaped metal hair dryer. We bunched together on the divan as Pam's mother deftly washed and styled each head of hair in turn, while Pam produced the odd laconic remark. In the afternoon, we headed outside to the steep paved road. Pam brought out two yellow skateboards, oblivious to the potential ruin of our new hair-dos. We teetered on the skateboards, practising short runs on the tarred driveway, and then Pam challenged us to the hilly road. Two of us looked out for cars, while the other two zoomed down the hill, hearts pounding, hair-dos frazzling. By some miracle, there were no fractured arms, dislocated shoulders or broken necks.

Supper was take-out Chinese food; dessert, crunchy fortune cookies. As the sky darkened, Pam led us into the living room. A long black leather chesterfield fronted by a heavy glass coffee table faced the large picture window, flanked by a teak credenza topped by a bold abstract painting. On an adjacent wall, a low matching bookcase held a long row of record albums and stereo equipment – an amplifier and turntable. Two large speakers stood in opposite corners of the room. There was a real Persian rug on the floor.

At Pam's direction, we pushed the coffee table underneath the window and pulled the drapes closed. She instructed us to lie down on the carpet and close our eyes. Then she pulled one of the records out of its sleeve, placed it carefully under the turntable's needle and turned out the lights. She lay down beside us. The room fell dark, black as the country sky outside. No one dared to speak.

We heard the faint hiss of the needle tracking in the grooves and then the room exploded with the opening bars of Beethoven's 5^th Symphony: Dah Dah Dah Dum! Dah Dah Dah Dum! I had never heard anything like it before. My knowledge of classical music was limited to the simple Mozart minuets and Clementi studies that I thumped through in my weekly piano lessons with Sister Mary Lolament. At home, we sometimes hauled out an old portable RCA Victor record-player and listened to The Sound of Music or Oklahoma. This music felt wild, fierce and powerful. The sound hurled at me, as if it was a live thing. As the music surged around, my sprouting teenage body tingled with the urgency of the violins and timpani. I felt I was racing across the fields on a runaway stallion. When the notes of the last movement finally died away, we lay where we were, silent in the dark room, until at last Pam rose and turned on the lights.

Varney, Varney, one more mile

As much as I love to write, it often falls to the bottom of the priority list. Some time ago, I realized that I needed group support to sustain my writing efforts. And then, poof! an invitation came to join a group of friends who wanted to continue their own writing. Thank you to John, Norma and Joan for getting me back on track.

Imagine seven children, ages one to twelve, crammed into an old sage-green Rambler station wagon. In the back seat, two young boys sit on either side of the oldest child, their big sister. She jabs each of them with sharp elbows whenever they try to reach across her to slap one another with their striped towels. Three older boys jostle on the the rear-facing bench at the very back of the wagon. A red Coleman cooler doubles as a foot rest. No seat belts in this era. In the front seat, the parents, weary from the week's work of milking cows and night-shift nursing. Between them sits the one-year-old, sucking her thumb and fingering a doll, its copper hair springing wildly from a battered head, one blue glass eye staring fixedly at the car's push-button dashboard, the other eye permanently shut.

It's a hot Sunday afternoon in July during the mid-'60s. My family is heading for a picnic outing at Varney Conservation Area, a 20-minute drive from our farm near Mount Forest, Ontario.

Earlier that day, heading home after Sunday Mass, my father bent to my mother's will and agreed to the picnic. He would much have preferred to stay home – alone – enjoying a rare moment of quiet privacy. Now he drives without speaking, his eyes fixed on the road. He steers using one rough and calloused hand, the middle finger chopped off at the first knuckle after an accident with the hay baler. Occasionally he barks at us to stop fighting or to sit still. My mother rolls down her window, lights a cigarette, and watches the rows of bright green corn springing up out of the passing fields.

On my left side, my little brother Richie begins rocking back and forth, crooning, “Varney, Varney, one more mile.” He had composed this line after our first trip to Varney several years before, when he had asked, “Are we there yet?” and was told to wait until a road sign would tell him we were close.  “Varney, Varney, one more mile,” he chants. Like a flock of crows, the rest of us pick up the refrain and soon the car rocks with our noisy squawking. Varney, Varney, one more mile, louder and louder until my exasperated father yells at us to shut up. It's impossible to suppress the giggles that burble through our clamped beaks. My father glares at us in the rear view mirror; my mother interrupts her dreamy smoking to turn around, scolding us with a stern look. Then, surprisingly, my father sticks out his long tongue at us, and our giggles are set free, dissolving the tension.

Finally, we pass the sign, green letters on a brown wooden board: Varney Conservation Area, one mile. Dad parks the car next to a crescent of cedar trees hugging a small pond. There's a sandy beach and a diving board on a wooden scaffolding. Parents serve as lifeguards. My brothers tumble out of the car and race for the water, blue and red swim trunks hanging from their bony hips. I help my parents unload the cooler with its cache of cheese and bologna sandwiches, a large plastic jug of cherry Koolaid, nine plastic beakers, a handful of paper napkins and two packages of Voortman's ginger spice cookies. Finding a clear spot some distance apart from the other families, my mother shakes a dark green plaid blanket onto the sand, one hand clutching her cigarette package, matches tucked into the flap. She places these next to the cooler, then steps out of her pink-striped cotton blouse and denim shorts to reveal a black swimsuit encasing generous breasts and a thickening waist. Scooping up the baby, she walks to the water, sets the child down, and then lies full-length on her stomach in the shallow water. My mother loves to swim. Patricia splashes and gurgles. My father folds himself into a lawn chair with a dented aluminium frame criss-crossed with frayed green and white webbing. He rolls up the bottoms of his dark brown trousers, exposing stark white ankles and bony feet. Settling into the chair, he takes off his socks and shoes and pushes his long toes deep into the sand in search of the coolest spot. He hates the water; in fact, never once in all my life did I ever see him swim.

My brothers splash up and down, flinging droplets from their hair like young puppies. One dives down to bring up a clump of muddy sand, and soon all five are slinging mud at each other. My father yells. The mud-slinging stops. Meanwhile, I walk self-consciously to the diving board, pulling down the seat of the new tangerine one-piecer that I bought after hours of poring through the Eatons' summer catalogue. I do a running dive, and practise my crawl till I reach a shallow spot, then stand on my hands, arching my legs as high as I can above the water's surface. I roll over and over, water rippling my body, my long brown hair streaming behind me. I'm a delicate mermaid and although he's not yet in sight, I'm convinced a handsome young prince is swimming towards me. I know he will immediately fall in love with me, astonished by my beauty and charm.

We swim for hours, until our fingers wrinkle, our lips turn blue and our teeth chatter with cold. My mother calls us out of the water, swaddling us in towels. We eat the sandwiches, slurp down the Koolaid, and steal one more cookie than allowed. Just five more minutes, we plead, and fall back into the water for one last swim.

The sun is sinking slowly behind the cedars as we pile back into the car. My mother leans over Patricia, sprawled on her lap, to turn on the radio to listen to the 6 o'clock news. There's some half-hearted pushing and shoving in the rear-facing seat, then, silence. Telephone poles flash by, and the pastures glow in the evening light. My brothers' heads nod. Some fall asleep. Richie stays awake, rocking back and forth as the fields spiral past. “Varney, Varney, one more mile,” he chants softly. Then his voice too trails off. He yawns and leans his head against my shoulder.

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.