I may have written before about building a kayak last year. I didn鈥檛 build it because I needed a kayak to commute to work, or to fish for food, or even to risk my life hurtling down some mountain torrent.
I did it partly to participate in the activities of a younger and fitter group of friends. And also, I guess, to prove to myself that I was still capable of building things. Beautiful things. Challenging things. Like a kayak without any frames, with hull panels that simply fit together to retain their shape.
I found an old set of kayak plans for a canvas-covered kayak, and adapted them into what is technically known as a monocoque hull 鈥� a shell whose thin skin carries all the stresses.
My partner Christine and my daughter Sharon helped me build the boat. None of us knew what we were doing. Although I had at least a distant idea of what steps to take.
Christine and I finished our kayak just in time to take it out on the lake at the end of summer last year. The first time I tried to get in, it repaid my dedication by dumping me in the water.
But we didn鈥檛 quit there. Christine and I took the finished kayak out on the lake again last weekend.
Wonder of wonders, it didn鈥檛 dump either of us!
We went for a relatively long paddle along the shore. We learned how to coordinate our paddles. How to turn. How to steer. And most of all, how not to tip this fragile conveyance.
Exhilarated by our success, we headed for the shore. We beached the kayak gently. And discovered we couldn鈥檛 get out.
How humiliating!
Not one but two beachgoers 鈥� total strangers to us and to themselves 鈥� ran to help. It only took one of them to extricate Christine. It took both of them hoisting me bodily before I could get my legs under me.
The debacle kinda busted our ego balloon.
Looking back the next day, we thought the experience was an analogy for life. Especially for life in the seniors鈥� lane. You celebrate two steps forward. And then you have a pratfall.
But the pratfall doesn鈥檛 negate the steps forward.
Progress is progress. Every step is worth taking. Even if you fall. Or fail.
The late Fred Buechner, prolific author and Presbyterian minister, mused in his book Whistling in the Dark about entering second childhood, when you can鈥檛 do all the things you used to do. He compared eighty-year-olds to eight-year-olds.
鈥淪econd childhood commonly means something to steer clear of,鈥� Buechner wrote, 鈥渂ut if part of the pleasure of being a child the first time around is that you don't have to prove yourself yet, part of the pleasure of being a child the second time around is that you don't have to prove yourself any longer. You can be who you are and say what you feel, and let the chips fall where they may.鈥�
Even if those chips mean needing assistance to get out of a kayak.
We will go paddling again. We believe there will be friendly people on the beach to help us when we return to shore.
Because that鈥檚 life.
