Years ago, our family took a trip to
I told my husband Bill I wanted to write a blog post about the experience. Safe to say he didn’t see the whole thing
Here’s our recounting of it all. It’s important to point out that context is key here. We were smiling and laughing the whole time we were going over all of this.
B: What’s the theme?
P: It’s marriage therapy in a canoe
B: What marriage therapy? We got nothing out of it.
P: Yes we did — I feel like it was therapeutic.
B: There you go — we already disagree.
There are some good marriage metaphors happening in the two-person canoe.
Maybe I reframe the canoe trip as a cathartic, learning experience. You both have to be balanced or you’ll tip over. You have to work as a team to get down the river. And sometimes you must fight the urge to clobber your partner over the head with your paddle.
P: You don’t think you got anything out of the experience?
B: You said you’d never ride in a canoe with me again.
P: I don’t think we operate as well in a canoe as we do each in our own kayak.
B: Is it going to take another 20 years of marriage to be able to get into a canoe together?
P: Well, when I’m in my own kayak, you’re not yelling at me.
B: I wouldn’t get too far ahead of yourself.
It’s true that we’ve had some memorable canoe experiences in the past.
There was that time going down the Harpeth River when I thought I had lost the car keys. We stopped at a little island for a picnic lunch and I didn’t see the keys in my bag. That day, we were in separate canoes. I had our older son in mine and Bill had our younger son and our collie. Bill was not a happy camper and got in his canoe to paddle ahead. Thirty minutes later when we stopped again, I found the keys in my bag. Look at that — I had them after all!
B: What lesson did we learn there except don’t give you the important stuff. You got mad at me for paddling ahead but I figured it was better than staying there and yelling at you.
P: Point in favor of being in separate canoes or kayaks.
As you paddle down the river, you must work together to navigate the obstacles in your way.
B: When I tell you to tell me to paddle left or right, all that you are supposed to do is tell me which direction to paddle. So you should say “left” or “right.” And what did you say? In case you don’t remember, you said straight….ahead is a rock,” with a five-second pause after the word straight. So we hit the rock and —
P: is that when we fell out?
B: No we just crashed into the straight ahead rock…
P: I fell out at the beginning..
Two and a half hours in, we still hadn’t come to the halfway point. There was no sign of that bridge. How long was this adventure going to take? We came upon a tree that had fallen down and was stretched all the way across the river. I didn’t want to get out on what looked like a snake-heaven bank, so I stayed in the water while Bill pulled our canoe out and around to the other side of the tree. Meanwhile, our older son quietly got his kayak over the tree, as well as his younger brother and his kayak, too.
B: He puts his kayak over and you talk about how great he did. And I got our freaking canoe over and you don’t say anything.
P: Yes, well he’s a kid
B: In a freaking kayak!
P: But he got himself and his brother across with no one telling him to, he just simply did it.
B: What do you mean? That’s what you had to do.
P: I know, but he didn’t need any help and got himself and his little brother and their kayaks over the tree.
B: I have the cooler, fishing rods, and everything.
I had been trying to convince one of the boys to swap places with me.
I wanted my own kayak. Finally, Bill and I made them both switch with us, so the boys had the canoe and we each had our own kayak.
P: Wait — I remember this now… in my defense, it was rapids. And this had been something out of Deliverance. It was supposed to be a 2-3 hour trip and it was like 6 hours.
B: No, 4-5.
P: It was every bit of 5 1/2. Seemed like 6.
B: So great, you’re on your own, in a kayak. And this was not crazy rapids. We were not going down some wild
P: Thank good ness for that guy- he was so nice!
B: Anybody that loses their kayak in one tiny little ripple..
P: It was not a ripple! It was rapids!
When you hit rapids, at all costs you must hold onto your boat.
If you get out and try to wade through some rocks, keep holding on tight to your boat lest it break away from you in the rough waters.
B: If you’re determined to
P: As far the marriage therapy aspect goes, you could say that the obstacles we hit were metaphors for life obstacles.
B: No, they weren’t. They were freaking rocks you wouldn’t get out of the way of.
P: You can’t say freaking with everything.
B: Yes I can — you can say whatever you want but
P: I was sitting at the table listening to a violinist play, looking at the twinkle lights, waiting for you guys to come out of a store and meet me, and then I get a text that we are leaving and you guys are getting KFC to eat back at home.
B: You have a previous scarring incident with KFC.
When I was single and had an apartment, my home telephone number (remember those?) was one digit off the number for KFC take-out. So I would get all kinds of random calls saying, “Yeah, I’d like a 10-piece bucket of Original Recipe…” One time in our courtship Bill said he would cook me dinner, but really he got KFC takeout. He thought it was funny. I was not amused.
P: After dealing with all of that on the river— the
P: There’s a lot of pressure for the person in the front of the canoe.
B: Pressure?! Unless you’re blind, there’s not much pressure.
P: You’re moving at a
B: It was NOT a fast clip.
P: Yes it was! In my defense, you didn’t do any better with the boys. We were all fighting over the kayaks.
B: I’m dealing with people that don’t understand their one role. How about that?
P: So you don’t think canoe marriage therapy could be thing?
B: Maybe, but somebody else can tell me about it. I won’t be doing it.
B: If you really want to get into it, well let’s analyze it. You could say just from reading this Bill might want to work on his patience, and it wouldn’t hurt for Paige to — she can play a role in things. You had one job to do and you couldn’t do it.
P: I will also say if someone gets pinched by a scorpion, and that becomes a mere footnote, you know something big went on that day. (Our older son got pinched by a scorpion that night on the back patio of our cabin.)
Have we taken out canoes or kayaks since that day? No. We’re more speedboat people now.
Bill’s edit: This doesn’t seem very flattering to either one of us. Basically what you’ve done is an anti-Facebook post. It takes the smiling family picture from some exotic location and gives you the behind-the-scenes reality.
Give us your smiling family picture on the beach: I bet that three minutes of investigative reporting would reveal someone was crying within ten minutes of that picture, someone else was yelling, and someone was off doing their own thing.
Maybe the real therapy here is not for the people in the canoe. The therapy is for the people reading this. This story illustrates that the stuff you see on social media isn’t always of Shiny Happy People.
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If you missed my previous post, you can click here: Ultralearning: An Interview with Author Scott Young
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