by Julie Clark Robinson<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I feel my best when on the water. I wonder what that means, but if I think about it too much, it will take away from the Zen of it all. I just know that when I\u2019m floating, weightless, in the cool softness of water, my edges soften.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My shoulders\u2014always creeping toward my ears\u2014 settle back into place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My ears tilt to attention. The less noise there is, the more they pick up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My lungs expand as if to say Don\u2019t forget about me. I need to stretch, too.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve had ten summers to come to this realization\u2014one slow, meandering kayak ride at a time. I thank my mother for it at every launch, but not because she taught me how to slow down. It\u2019s the opposite. Watching my beautiful, frantic, Type A mom dart from one task to another my entire life, I decided I needed to take a beat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We called her Birdy\u2014that\u2019s how frail, yet fast, she moved through her days up until nearly the end. She had heart disease from an early age; her first (of two) open-heart surgeries was at 35. She retired at 53 after a major heart attack and a twelve-hour surgery to buy us more time with her. Twenty-three years, in fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Birdy did her best to slow down, to smell the roses, and even to plant some at her new retirement home near my sister in Florida. She\u2019d pack a cooler with fruit and sit on the beach at first. But old habits die hard, and in her case, they likely shortened her life. She just couldn\u2019t shut down the noise in her head about the work she should be doing around the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once, she called my sister over to take her to the emergency room\u2014but first she needed to give her little dog a bath. Later, when I flew down to help, she was bothered about the dust gathering on her teacups in the curio cabinet, but she couldn\u2019t get out of bed. So, I brought the little treasures to her bedside and gently polished each one so that she could rest easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After she passed away, my sisters and I divided her assets. I was determined to use her savings only for things that she would\u2019ve appreciated. New carpet. Fresh paint over the dirty little handprints on our family room walls. Anything that felt like it would help me clean up my domestic act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But before I opened an IRA to deposit the rest, I strayed from my plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For as long as I could remember, I\u2019d wanted a kayak, but it wasn\u2019t something my mom would\u2019ve wanted, enjoyed, or sat still for. I wrestled with the idea of using her money for something so purely mine. Something she wouldn\u2019t have understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, I bought the cheapest plastic kayak I could find at Dick\u2019s Sporting Goods, along with matching paddles and a life jacket. I even added a cup holder because I was all in at that point, and cold beer seemed to be part of the vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It also occurred to me that it might be channeling my dad, the outdoorsman, instead\u2014which I\u2019m sure Birdy would not have appreciated, given their long-ago divorce. Still, I told myself that she had loved him once, so why not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I\u2019ve never looked back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I started by going to the little goldfish-bowl lake in the metro park in our northeast Ohio town. The first time I pushed off and felt gravity shift from the sandy bank to the buoyancy of the water, my heart lifted right along with it. There\u2019s a quiet euphoria in drifting with nature that I feel down to my core.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sky looks different somehow without my feet on the ground. I\u2019ve discovered that I\u2019m a bird watcher. If I\u2019m stealth enough, the herons let me come close. When I\u2019m not, they fly away to the sound of my apologies. There\u2019s a raccoon that wades out from the north edge of a lagoon, and I sit quietly hoping to see him catch a fish. I usually end up tossing him an apple core because I\u2019ve yet to see him catch anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These days, I leave the back seats of my SUV down from May through October so I can slide my kayak in and get out as often as I can. Sometimes I bring a book, tie off to a tree branch for a nap, and I\u2019ve even been known to paint my fingernails\u2014when else does life give you enough stillness for polish to dry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of my dear friends liked what she heard about my discoveries on the water, so she got a kayak and started joining me occasionally. One simple text and a \u201cmeet you in the middle\u201d is all it takes for a Saturday afternoon to turn into a reset for both of us. We\u2019ve long since agreed that what is said on the water stays on the water. Now it\u2019s not just me, but her, who lets nature smooth out life\u2019s kinks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s what I know \u2026 I can still hear my mom\u2019s voice saying, Julie, sloooowwww down; you\u2019re going to burn yourself out.<\/em> I am every bit as high-strung as she was, and she could see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While she would never have spent hours drifting in a kayak, I like to think that she would appreciate the balance it gives to me. Usually, I pack a little picnic\u2014she would\u2019ve loved that; she was the queen of picnics even if she never lingered around a table for long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually, I come home and pick up my day where it left off. But on the water, I do something she never quite could\u2014I sit still long enough to let things settle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s something she gave me, even if she couldn\u2019t find it for herself.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Julie Clark Robinson I feel my best when on the water. 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