Rising

by Sharon Wood

  School is imminent for Robin, and I attend a public meeting with the school board to discuss upcoming budget cuts. When I listen to what is going to get cut, it sounds like the kids are going to come up short. I walk out with another mother whose child is Robin’s age. Within minutes of talking, we hatch a dream to start our own school.

  I lie awake in bed that night as that spark of a new dream lights me up. In the morning Marni laughs when I tell her about my concerns from the school meeting and the idea of starting a school. “There it is,” she says, “a gift in unfamiliar packaging! That’s what you call setbacks and obstacles in your presentations, isn’t it?”

  “It’s an impossible dream, though. I’m not an educator and I don’t know a thing about starting a school.”

  “Well, as Kevin would say, ‘What’s the worst thing that can happen by trying?’”

  So I try, pouring my energy, with a like-minded group, into starting a school. The gift in unfamiliar packaging is a level of passion and engagement that I haven’t experienced since I was gunning for Everest. Mountain Gate Community School opens in September of ’96 with a first class of thirteen students, grades 1 through 3, in a single room. The school will expand to five classrooms, kindergarten through grade 6, by 1998. And I will remain in a leadership position until Robin graduates and moves into the public system. Ironically, Everest lends me the credibility to attract donors and raise funds for families who couldn’t otherwise afford to pay for a private school. I have never worked harder. The pride I find in this thriving and vibrant community we have created means everything.

  In a school that once seemed an impossible dream, it feels like we’re changing the world kid by kid, family by family. And the biggest surprise: this gift comes in the giving, not the taking.

  * * *

  The humbling experiences of motherhood and the school shift my approach in my presentations from performing to giving. I feel invigorated as I integrate this new sense of empathy and connection into my scripts. I elbow Everest aside for a change, turning the mountain into the stage rather than the star. My shift in perspective becomes apparent when a booking takes me to Orlando to speak to a conference of five thousand nurses, the largest crowd I have addressed yet.

  I take long, slow, deep breaths and chant my mantra, believe and begin, believe and begin, as the emcee introduces me. My title slide “Everest—the Impossible Dream” comes up on the screen behind her and on the six other eight-by-eight-metre screens along the sides of the stadium. I walk up a dozen or more stairs to the stage while Elvis Presley’s “The Impossible Dream” booms through the speakers. I put this outrageous fanfare out of my mind to focus on what is important to me.

  I feel the power of my intention as an improbable hush falls over this immense crowd. I focus on the nurses in the first few rows as I say, “To make the impossible possible on Everest, we had to raise our baseline from surviving to thriving. Thriving is not about working harder, carrying heavier loads or putting in longer days. Thriving starts with altering our perceptions. I have spent a disproportionate amount of time wishing: if only I had more of something, or better conditions—a myriad of if-onlys. All that does is take up energy and hold me back. Once we get over the if-onlys and commit, all form of resources and assistance become available. The trick is to recognize these gifts, wrapped in unfamiliar packaging. That takes an open mind.”

  As I close I say, “I’d like to answer the question I’m asked most often: Once you’ve climbed the highest mountain in the world, what’s next?” I advance to the last slide of Daniel and Robin, four and seven years old, wearing climbing helmets and standing on either side of me holding onto my harness. “This is what’s next,” I say, “raising two sons. I realize this is considered an ordinary affair—one that society expects of us. But this is my next. And it is the most difficult yet most rewarding climb I’ve ever taken on!” Five thousand people stand in a wave of thunderous applause.

  When I arrive home three days later, no one greets me at the door. I find the boys in the playroom engrossed in their Lego construction.

  When Chris arrives home a few minutes later, he shouts out, “Hello this house!” The boys rush him squealing, “Daddy, Daddy!” They leap up into his arms.

  “How’re my boys?” Chris blows a raspberry fart into Daniel’s bared tummy. Robin hangs off his other arm, tugging him into the playroom to show off their latest box fort.

  If only he would kiss me. If only he was that happy to see me. Oddly, I am jealous of how he cherishes his boys more than me. It’s as if I existed in his heart only long enough to bring forth a new male generation and now that that’s done, he’s done—with me. Doesn’t he know our love is what will hold our family together? The truth is we’re both so busy thriving in our work lives. All we have time for before one of us is gone again is who’s paid the bill for what, how the latest nanny is working out, and what changes there have been in school and homework routines.

  As I watch Chris with the boys, I think, What the hell is going on with me? Is it the big fall from the adulation of thousands of strangers, to this—feeling like a stranger in my own home? I feel selfish for wanting this love from Chris and I know it isn’t right. I carry my own little war around inside: resentment versus shame and self-loathing. I castigate myself, thinking that I should be able to alter my perception, open my mind, see the gifts of this husband and two beautiful boys!

  I cherish times when I lie flanked by Daniel and Robin at bedtime, reading aloud the adventures of Harry Potter. I love to voice the characters as Robin nestles in and his brother clings to me. I stroke Daniel’s head and knead Robin’s fingers as the boys drift off to sleep. I float in these sublime moments. I swell with pride in the wild times, such as the day we’re at Marni’s place and she gasps when she looks out the window to see Daniel trailing Robin across the peak of their garage roof. Of course, we stop them from trying to leap across to the neighbour’s garage. But I know they are irrepressible and adventurous souls by now, not mine to own but to love and protect as best I can. These magnificent boys show me a capacity for deep, fierce love and tenderness in myself.

  Chris’s mom dies the following summer, then my dad in December and Chris’s brother in January. The losses devastate Chris and me and further strain our relationship. We fly directly from my dad’s memorial to Chris’s brother’s service in Toronto. As president of the school—keeper of the peace between teachers, children and parents—and motivational speaker, mother, and co-ordinator of nannies and office managers, I have no time to pause.

  The respite I find in my boys and my work begins to crumble. And the slightest things begin to unhinge me: Robin refusing to do his homework, Daniel dropping a glass on the floor, a scrap between the two of them. I hate it when they fight. They are vicious. I shout at them, call them little shits, push them around and hate myself for it. My doctor urges me to try antidepressants, but I’m too proud and too afraid of the stigma attached to mental illness. I’m not depressed! I know I can fight this. I know I am strong. These problems should be trifling compared to the mountains I’ve climbed.

  But no amount of strength, will or pride helps me now. I get worse. I am driving our boys and some other kids home from school, and their mother, Jo, meets us at the car. This Australian woman takes one look at my red-rimmed eyes and says, “Get out of the car. You’re coming in for a cuppa.”

  While the kids play, Jo settles me at her table with a hot cup of tea and then says plainly, “So, what’s going on?”

  I trace the paisley pattern on the tablecloth with my fingers, look at my hands—anything but her—as I say, “I can’t stop crying. I cry when I drop a plate on the floor. I cry at the dread of getting through another day. I feel out of control, Jo. I’m terrified by this outpouring of sadness.”

  She has watched me start and manage the school, the board of directors and my life, with will, strength and competence. When Jo, a nurse,
midwife and proponent of natural remedies, declares, “You’re depressed; you need drugs,” I surrender.

  The act of surrender is powerful. I reduce my commitments with the school and work. Within a few weeks I feel a side effect of the anti­depressant when my fingers begin to tingle. Then soon after when I’m riding up a long hill on my bicycle, I feel a sudden rush of euphoria and clarity. My only guess is that the meds are combining with the exercise-induced endorphins and, voila, turbo power! I feel a fluttering sensation in my chest as if I’ve just pushed hard off the bottom of a murky pool and am rising upward. The cause behind the depression is biological. It’s not all me.

  I continue to see more light in my life. In November, I bow before Governor General Roméo LeBlanc at La Citadelle in Quebec City as I receive the Meritorious Service Medal of Canada. As he places the medal around my neck I register the irony. I bow too to the duality in my life: gift and curse. The constant movement and striving that have earned me this medal have also staved off the depression I’ve had most of my adult life. I would never have asked for this epiphany to come to me this way, but I trust that I’m still being guided to slow down and allow room for self-compassion. But it seems there is still more ground for this new state of being to take.

  * * *

  It’s a balmy New Year’s Day. I’m wheeling fast down a trail on my bike when my back tire slips on the snow as I go to jump over a log. My bike hits the log, comes to a hard stop and I soar over the handlebars. I hit the frozen ground headfirst, suffering a concussion and fracturing some facets in my cervical vertebrae. The accident pins me down with nausea and dizziness. The doctor tells me to avoid any fast movement and busy places.

  Fortunately, it is off-season in the conference business. First, I pick up a papier-mâché project I’ve been working on with the kids at school. One day I conjure wings boned with coat-hanger wire; the next I sculpt claws and teeth out of a paper clay. Soon, long past when everyone in the house has gone to sleep, I’m listening to Handel’s Messiah and, as if under a spell, rendering armatures for life-sized coyotes. Night after night, I cover the mishmash of rebar and aluminum foil tubes with paper pulp and sculpt it into muscle, hide and fur. From inspiration to reality, from garbage to spirit, these creatures take shape. This flurry of intense engagement is a refreshingly private affair of no importance to anyone but me. This creative process nourishes me.

  Bookings made a year in advance have Everest dragging me back to the podium by early March. I wonder how I will manage on stage in this vulnerable state. Remarkably, I find myself speaking with stronger conviction and Everest sliding into the back seat. After my presentations, people come forward and say, “I can be honest with you now. A few of us were wondering why they brought in someone to talk about Everest—of all things for an insurance company! But oh, do I get it now! You’ve inspired me take on a whole new approach with my support staff.” Others say, “It’s like you were talking directly to me, like you were referring to my challenges alone.” People come forward to confide their stories to me. And I listen with new ears to the similarities in their challenges and our narratives. My anxiety moves toward a sense of ease as my public and private persona inch closer to becoming one.

  This state of surrender is deepening my connection with my audiences. But the opposite is happening with Chris and me. The contrast is becoming unbearable, and I realize this on Easter Sunday morning when I’m fulfilling my duty as parent-janitor of the week at the school. I’m scrubbing the tops of the children’s desks, puzzling over the discussion Chris and I had about the logistics of childcare and our travel schedules before I left the house. As I lean in to work on a stubborn streak of ink, I realize that our arguing stopped some time ago and in its place is indifference. Somewhere in one of the many books I have read on the mysteries of human behaviour, it stated that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. This premise thuds home as an unassailable truth and a feeling of calm resolve infuses me. I phone Chris and tell him I want to separate. He says flatly, “I’ve had enough too.”

  Although we dread telling the boys, we sit them on the couch. Kneeling before them with a hand on each of their knees, I say, “Mommy is going to move into another house, so now you’ll have two houses.” Nothing changes in ten-year-old, wise-beyond-his-years Robin. But there is no cajoling Daniel, who starts wailing—inconsolably. I sweep him up into my arms and hold him tight as he clutches my shirt and sobs into my chest. I thought I would cry too. But strangely I don’t. I feel his despair yet I know this is what I must do. I trust my decision in the way I trust airline attendants when they tell adults to pull on their own oxygen masks before helping others. We must help ourselves before we can assist our children. There is no argument over custody, as I know the boys will need Chris even more than before. I hope he’ll stay home more often now. And I don’t utter an unkind word about him.

  “So what do I call Chris now?” I ask my friend Genevieve during what we call our running dialogues on one of our regular trots along the mountain trails. “I can’t get my head around the term ‘ex-husband.’ Surely there’s got to be a more compassionate title for the father of our children.”

  “Well,” she huffs, “I call mine my ‘wasband.’” With no better option, I adopt the term on the spot.

  After our run that day, I invite Genevieve in to see my new place. I hear my voice echo off the walls of the empty living room. “The worst part of separating is thinking about how I’m going to bear living apart from my kids in the same town.”

  “You’re the one who says in your presentations that the anticipation is the worst stage of doing anything difficult.”

  “Yeah, and how many times do I have to learn this before I get it?”

  “A mere nine times and nine different ways before it sticks,” she says. “I don’t know where the nine times comes from, but the point is: it’s a cumulative process. One day, you get it and a voice inside you shouts, ‘Aha!’ And there you are: living your future, thriving in the present.”

  Her theory starts to prove itself when a couple of days after Marni and Steve’s wedding in August, the newlyweds help me move into my house and make it a home. I ask myself, How is it I’m so lucky to have friends who help me move on their honeymoon? This extended family is my family. This support and sense of belonging helps me quit the meds. Hard as it is to be on my own with or without the boys, I begin to notice how satisfying it is to run my own little home and business with a comfort I couldn’t have imagined a short time ago. As I settle in, the rest of my world does as well.

  Chris and I finalize our divorce the next year. On a good day I trust that I am embracing my new life. On other days I am tested, as I am when I find an essay Daniel has written for a school project. I step back and wilt as I read it: “I knew happiness until I was eight, then it stopped when my parents got a divorce. I’ll never be happy again.” Of course I consider my responsibility for his despair, but I hold fast to faith in my decision. The length and degree of Daniel’s suffering stretches beyond its due time, which prompts Chris and me to take him to talk to a psychologist. As any competent practitioner does, the doctor treats the whole of the problem by asking Chris and me several questions about our own history. He’s confounded by how we speak so kindly of one another and asks why we split up.

  Chris answers, “We buried my mother, my brother and Sharon’s father, and then I buried myself in my work. I wasn’t there for Sharon’s mourning.”

  His admission astonishes me. Tears trickle down my cheeks as forgiveness opens my heart to let us both in. It dawns on me that my compassion is taking a slow turn toward a new and deeper love for Chris, who I’ve blamed for not being who I wanted him to be. Although we will remain divorced, a fierce loyalty begins that day for this friend and father of our children.

  * * *

  I soon cut back on my speaking. And I feel pulled to begin guiding again. Although I have been climbing consistently,
guiding demands high standards in client care in the mountains. I ask Dwayne, Albi and fellow guides to coach me in bringing my skills up to current industry best practices. I’m surprised when old friends and colleagues welcome me back to this profession, and I feel like I’m coming home.

  I am surprised at how much I have missed this craft of guiding people in how to move on rock, snow and ice; conserve their energy; and find their way and sometimes themselves in the mountains. By showing others, I remind myself that difficulty and discomfort are often a matter of perception, not necessarily reasons to stop what we are doing. And I love it best when my clients, and for that matter anyone other than a speakers’ bureau, are not aware I have climbed Everest.

  I like that Everest seems to be edging out of my life, yet it still manages to catch me off guard. At Chris’s annual Boxing Day party, when I join the crowd in the kitchen, a hand clutches my arm. A woman I don’t know exclaims, “Oh, you’re the Everest Lady, aren’t you! Come with me, I must introduce you to my family.” Once she has us assembled, grandchildren and all, she says, “So! Tell us the Everest story.”

  I’m surprised to hear myself shout, “No!” I watch this woman’s smile morph into a big O. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m here to visit friends I haven’t seen for ages.”

  I excuse myself and head straight for Chris, who’s at the sink. I wrap my arms around him from behind and whisper into his ear, “I just said no for the first time!”

  He turns and hugs me. “Good for you!” he says and squeezes me tighter. He knows I mean that I have just stood up to my overbearing friend, Everest. From this point onward I’m more polite, yet firm about who’s in charge.