Making Corrections: The Story of Our Lives

Early in the fall last year I went out for the evening with two women friends (Sally and Judy) on our mutual friend, Rob’s, 36-foot lobster yacht. It was a perfect evening, in the 70s, sunny and bright. The wind had been blowing steadily during the day so, as we left the harbor, we headed into some chop that we had to power through--the windshield wipers swishing back and forth like mad. We were headed west to Cockenoe Island where we planned to anchor, have some wine and cheese, and just enjoy the evening.

Rob’s boat, Anja, is wide and comfortable, the cockpit a small cushiony living room and the space in the stern easily accommodated the four of us in folding chairs. The full moon was rising as the sun was setting turning the sky to flame.  Feeling the sun and the breeze on our faces, floating peacefully on the Sound, we acknowledged our pleasure in being able to be there. We gawked at a parachute sailor who sped past us. Holding the line to his skyward sail with one hand, he smiled and waved at us with the other as he whizzed by.

I don’t know how long we were anchored, perhaps an hour. We wanted to get back before dark and, because the water was pretty turbulent we knew getting home to Southport could take a while. Tossing the remaining chips and cheese to the fish, we folded and stashed the chairs.

Sally managed the boat while Rob and I went forward to cope with the anchor. I had to be told what to do. I know nothing of powerboats. Sailboats, yes, power boats, no. Sally did a great job following our hand signals and we got the anchor up without mishap. My job, it turned out, was to spray the anchor clean as it rose out of the water. No problem; I could handle that.

While I was chatting with Judy, Sally was driving us home, Rob standing close behind her. I noticed that we were being lifted and dropped sideways by some substantial swells.

“What’s up, Sally?” I asked.

“Do you want to take it?” was her reply.

I heard myself say, “Sure!”

In just minutes with the wheel in my hands I knew what I—and Sally before me--was up against: Our course toward the Southport/ Fairfield coastline forced us to cross the swells and they were having their way with us. A strong pull and lift to starboard veered us way off course, then a downward slide to port was pulling us off in the other direction. Trying to control the extent of the pull from one side then to the other took everything I had.

“This is work!” I fussed.

“You are doing fine,” Rob said from behind me. “Much better than the auto pilot. You are making the corrections sooner which helps.”

Encouraged by our captain, I carried on, keeping my eye on the beach house on the strip of sand way ahead, using it as my guide. If I remained watchful, anticipating every lifting swell to the right, and then compensating for the drop down to the left; if I could  manage that for long enough, we would eventually arrive at the entrance of the channel.

We were never in any danger; this was just concentrated effort. We needed to cross those swells. We needed to get from here to there, period.

The late Rock Hildreth, a master carpenter friend of mine, once told me how difficult it was even in carpentry to find a true straight line between two points. “You think a line is plumb,” Rock would say, “and then you find it isn’t, not quite, and you have to go back and get it right. Maybe more than once.”

At least in carpentry straight lines do exist; they are findable. But how rare it is in life that we are able to follow a straight line from start to finish in anything we do? Swells of one kind or another throw us off course constantly. Corrections have to be made. Planes get canceled; we make new travel plans. The best knitters find a mistake rows back and rip out inches of their work in order to correct it. Certainly no career path is straight; careers are fraught with detours and occasional dead ends. A spouse dies; we must find a way to live. Some choices we make pay off; lots don’t.

 So what do we do? We hang on and keep on making corrections till one way or another our purposes are achieved and we arrive at the opening of a welcoming channel. And, as good as that feels, we know it’s not the arrival, but the journey itself, the struggle along the way, that is the making of us: the creation of the story of our lives.