Chris had surgery in March, which corresponded with an alarming uptick in our household’s chocolate cake consumption. During his recuperation, which was slow, we would share a small piece on the couch, and I would head up to bed. Unbeknownst to me, Chris would head to the refrigerator and have a second, larger piece that he shared with no one, and for a few months, every time I would go to the grocery store I would see “chocolate cake” on the grocery list. “Why the hell am I buying chocolate cake again?,” I would think as I headed to the bakery, and I would chalk it up to the vagaries of teenaged children. And then one day, I rounded a corner and caught Chris in profile, holding his stomach and shaking his head. Aha.

I love my husband, whether he is a man who weighs x pounds or a man who weighs x + y pounds (with y‘s representing a number undisclosed to his wife). He has looked more or less the same in the almost 30 years that I have known him, and apparently the same can be said of people who have known him longer: He occasionally gets recognized by someone with whom he attended elementary school. The years have been kind. Which is why it broke my heart to see the look on his face when I rounded that corner.

I like to fix things. (Some may say I meddle, others may say I force the issue — but me, I say I like to fix things.) So for Father’s Day, I bought Chris a Fitbit. It matches my own. Yes, I have had a Fitbit for several years now, and yes, I am one of those gleeful idiots who marches while brushing her teeth to get in a hundred more steps. Even my family loves my Fitbit, for I am an easy touch when it comes to getting up from the table, getting up off the couch, walking back inside when we’re all in the car and something’s been forgotten. I am a slave to the step. And when my old iPhone followed my purse in its suicide mission off a speeding car a few weeks ago, my new, improved iPhone introduced me to a whole new level of Fitbit obsession, for I now log my food. Which suddenly explained my own previously unexplained weight gain over the past few months.

All of which explains why Chris and I were sitting in a McDonald’s last week on vacation, sawing a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit in half with a plastic knife, to share. Like elastic waist pants, early dinners, sensible cars, and an upwardly creeping volume on the television, nothing signals advancing age like shared entrees. I was reminded of a Victor Hugo quote: Forty is the old age of youth, fifty the youth of old age. And there we were, having tagged the bag at third and barreling into the home plate of our 50th birthdays.

The vacation last week is one that typically makes me feel young. For 70 years, Chris’ father has been going to the same beach, and since the summer after his birth, Chris has, too. I am a blip in this history: I was the first friend that Chris ever took to the beach, meaning that I first spent a week there in 1986. While I have missed a few years, my children haven’t. We — along with Chris’ parents, his siblings, their children — all stay in a single house, with 15 people sleeping under one roof. Everyone has been known to revert to childhood behaviors, which is why it has a way of making me feel young (and other things, too, if I’m being honest here). I have always described this week as one belonging to his family, but it struck me on the way up this year that if I have been eating their crab cakes and clam chowder for 30 years, it’s about time that they are my family, too.

This change in perspective helped, what with my going from interloper to insider. All families are different, and even though I haven’t lived with my parents and siblings for decades, it is easy to fall into a rhythm with them. We are a mouthy, largely red-headed tribe that tells stories and laughs, occasionally cries and pouts, and travels in a noisy pack that announces its presence rather unceremoniously when out in polite society. We turn from hungry to hangry in the drop of a hat, and we love our nicknames: Famous, Uncle Jalapeno, Murray. Chris’ family is different — how could it not be, after that description? — and more subdued, straight-forward, practical, forthright. But most of all, and perhaps best of all, they are close-knit: Both of his parents are only children, and they happily welcome anyone who qualifies as family. And more than ever this year, I realized that I was not some tenuous family member that Chris’ dad tried to claim — like claiming that he was related to my sister — but that I was, in fact, family.

Which explains the family photos. As he does every year, my father-in-law, an avid amateur photographer, brought a handful of his hundreds of photo albums (numbered, annotated, and arranged chronologically) and left them on the cottage’s coffee table. As I flipped the pages, I saw my children grow up. I saw Chris — the same solid, constant Chris, Chris when he weighed x. I saw his parents when they were my age, and when I looked across the room, there they were — his father completely grey, his mother a little stooped, both lined, both older, both happy to be surrounded by everyone they really loved, both looking forward to a meal and a special dessert.

One of the albums contained the first picture ever of Chris and me together, standing outside of a college dormitory in late 1985. From that point, I saw myself grow up, from a child of 17 to a 45 year-old adult, and I have to tell you — even beyond the progression of unflattering haircuts — the photos distressed me: I did not look entirely comfortable in my own skin. I looked grim: shoulder to the wheel, muscling through life, avoiding joy, focusing on strife. And as the consummate over-achiever, I am proud to announce that I went through an awkward phase lasting at least 28 years, if not longer, and I have pictures to document it.

But I am far prouder to announce that I have been working on it. It is easier to be me these days. Some progress has been made on less: less food, less spending, less judgment, less care. Some progress has been made on more: more steps, more love, more acceptance, more forgiveness, more contemplation, more creativity, more fun. In the old age of my youth, I feel stripped down to my essence: This is who I am. Take me. Or leave me. (I got an inkling of this from a stranger at a cash register a few weeks ago; as she looked at the decade-old photos on my license and debit card, and back up at me, she said that I seemed to be so much more myself, who I was supposed to be, now. And then she hastily added that I shouldn’t take that the wrong way. But how could I take that the wrong way? It was the truth.)

I used to worry about aging, about turning into one of those people who shares a biscuit at a fast food restaurant with her husband while on vacation. But as I celebrated my birthday a few weeks ago, surrounded by a number of people that I really love, and as I celebrated again at the beach with (our) family, I was so glad to be at this point in my life, with finally — finally! — some insight into what really mattered. Family. Friends. Health. Shared meals. Shared celebrations. Time away. Comfort. Less of some things, more of others. Steps forward. Chocolate cake.

ALC

We moved into a soulless apartment in Savannah in 1992, and a year later, bought our first home — a small blue bungalow built in 1926. Seven years later, we moved into our current home, a brick Colonial also built in 1926, two doors down from the bungalow. It may have been the worst move of all time. There was simply too much going on in January 2000 — I was changing jobs, our children were ages 2 and 8 months — and a move two doors down encouraged no organization whatsoever. The movers made the short transport of all the heavy things, and we assured them that we could handle everything else. As it turned out, we could — but we didn’t — and shortly before closing, some good friends and good beer showed up miraculously at our house, and chair by chair, stick by stick, the move was made. Sort of. The new owners of the bungalow asked us in March if we could please empty our things out of their garage. And over a weekend, lawn implement by lawn implement, stick by stick, we were completely in our new home. Where we have remained.

I have had the great good fortune of falling deeply in love twice in the real estate market. Whenever I meet someone I truly love, I have this feeling: You are one of my people. Apparently this certainty extends to clapboard siding, bricks and mortar, for at both the bungalow and now here, I walked through the door, found myself smitten, and knew that I was home. (At both the bungalow and now here, Chris forbade me from sharing this good news with the seller — and more importantly, the realtor.)

Part of the romance with this house came from a very tidy garden, which we inherited. The front yard was almost severe, with rigid plantings and a lot of lawn, and it gave way to a backyard with a formal swath of shrubbery and tasteful plantings of carefully coordinated colors, all undulating in perfectly arced brick beds. Our neighborhood encourages walking and dog ownership, and between the two, I had exchanged pleasantries with the home owner — the gardener — a number of times before I moved into her house, and I had seen her in action almost every day. She spent countless hours weeding, pruning, watering, mulching. The yard was immaculate.

For the first few years, I tried. Oh, how I tried! I felt like I had to honor the gardener and honor the work, and as a result, the garden became work. It was exhausting. Into my chaotic life, chock full of small children (and their many, many needs), a very serious job, and my own relentness pursuit of perfection, an endless pit of need bloomed: that damn garden. It was one more thing — and one more thing I had to do right. Something had to give. My sanity? My sleep? As it turned out, two things had to appear — a play fort in the backyard, an addition to the rear of the house — and finally, in the construction debris and destruction and the mudslide of a yard, the garden was toast. Only the bones remained.

I feel incredibly guilty as I write this now. I come from a long line of people with dirt under their fingernails, Miracle Gro in their veins, favorite trowels, roto-tillers, wide-brimmed straw hats. We are a people who cannot resist the earth. Fittingly enough, my last name — which is my maiden name — refers to land ownership. Letting go of a garden is sacrilege, and while I always miss my grandmother, the matriach of my dirt-obsessed family, I suppose that it is good that she wasn’t alive to see it.

And then the earth began to call, softly but surely. It coincided with a low point of my life, when that whole relentless-pursuit-of-perfection thing had begun to backfire. Everything felt like an intractable mess. There is an old adage in the law, one handed down by older lawyers: When you don’t know what to do, do . . . something. I didn’t know what to do, so the garden became my something.  Let me tell you this: Gardening is a tough endeavor when you are not entirely comfortable with yourself. Your hands are free, your mind roams, and you are left to your own thoughts, which (depending on the circumstances) can be terrifying. (And cathartic. All at once.) But I plowed forward, in a series of very tiny, almost imperctible steps that seemed to lead nowhere. A shrub pruned here, a patch of weeds pulled there. Mulch scattered, a fence painted. Plants moved, plants (inadvertently) killed, plants exactly right. An estate sale fountain painted and restored, a pond dug, fish added. And when I had money, a garage rebuilt, a patio laid, a fence erected. I grew to love the leap of faith that seeds are. I learned when to let go and let nature take her course, whether in the form of freeze, drought, or squirrels. And I rejoiced in the little acts of caretaking, the puttering, the daily bit of fuss. I became comfortable in myself, and comfortable on this earth.

One day, Chris joined me outside. (His grandfather was a gardener, albeit one with a rococo flair. In the midst of his own garden, he had a concrete fountain, with water spiling from the urn held by a nude woman. He painted — and by that, I mean he applied paint to — the woman in a rather lurid fashion. I’ll leave it to your imagination, but let’s just say that his grandfather’s handiwork suggested that he had a thing for redheads.) Chris’ lurid gardening roots aside, this is some of my favorite time with him, working in silent tandem with my partner to create something beautiful. Now our daughter joins sometimes, too, puttering and watering and tending.

Between us, we have created something that looks nothing like the gardens we inherited. They are gone. The severe front yard is now an English cottage garden, a riot of flowers and food behind a picket fence. The orderly back yard is now lush, with a hot tub and seating areas and a hidden jungle vibe. Having abandoned my pursuit of perfection — a real sucker’s game — the gardens suit me. Exuberant, a little too much, joyful, barely contained. Rather than looking good and presenting a prosperous appearance — the two main functions of the old garden — the gardens now serve my purposes. Out front, I have tomatoes, herbs, and flowers to enjoy and share with friends.  Out back, I have a soothing spot to escape, and like the move from the bungalow to this house, it is nothing short of miraculous when good friends and good beer show up. I realize that I have rejoined my tribe, favorite trowel firmly in hand.

ALC

P.S. — As a gardener, I despise this inspirational phrase that I occasionally see on T-shirts or bumper stickers or (heaven forbid) posters: Bloom where you are planted. This is not how it works. Some things simply can’t bloom where they are planted. Impatiens don’t survive in direct sun, rosemary will die in a bog, peonies rarely make it in coastal Georgia. Try this one instead: The best fertilizer is the gardener’s footsteps. True in your yard, true in your life.

Stories that begin with the blaring of a burglar alarm in your home at 1:28 a.m. in the wee hours of a Sunday morning do not always end well. Fear not: This one ends just fine. There was no intruder, no apparent security breach. But Chris and I did not know this at the time. We had stayed up too late, and we laid in bed talking, in a way that felt a lot like a sleepover in my younger days. One of us would talk, the other would drowse off, and we would tag off between talking and drowsing, drowsing and talking. The alarm’s blaring ended all of that, and suddenly wide awake, Chris charged downstairs, baseball bat in hand.

Whereupon I violated protocol. There is at least a tacit understanding between us that charging downstairs to confront an intruder is Chris’s job, but at that addled hour, it seemed like a good idea (at least to me) to barge downstairs in my flowered pajamas, find the largest knife possible in a kitchen drawer, and prowl around the house, knife raised by my right ear, game face on, like I knew what I was doing. This, of course, is a total lie, for I feel certain that 1) I would have absolutely no idea what to do in a knife fight; 2) my game plan — going all spider monkey on an intruder — would fail miserably; and 3) at some point, Chris would have to save me from myself.

But without ever having to test my knife-wielding mettle, the situation quickly simmered down. Our first clue? The burglar alarm display told us that the front door was ajar, but it clearly was shut and locked. Our second clue? Buddy, who barks like he’s possessed when even I open the door, remained asleep. And our final clue? The young police officer, who scanned the yard with a flashlight, found no sign of entry. Which left Chris, and me, and now our daughter (who had awakened in all of the commotion) downstairs at 1:34 a.m., all victims of a massive adrenaline dump. We did what any family in our situation would do: We sat on the couch, ate ice cream, watched Netflix, and tried the whole going-to-bed thing again around 3:30.

As I sat on the couch, I assessed the contents of our house from a burglar’s perspective. Early in my life in Savannah, I sat on a park bench next to a wealthy Savannahian, whom I knew only by reputation. As our dogs played, she told me about a burglary at her house: While she was on vacation, burglars arrived in a moving truck, loaded all of her possessions, and drove off. Her artwork. Her jewelry. Her silver. Her antiques. Her furs. Even her underwear. And while some time had passed between the burglary and our conversation, she choked up as she told me about it. Oh, I get it. We all feather our nests as we wish, and I simply cannot imagine the trauma of finding everything you own suddenly gone.

But as I looked around my house in the middle of the night, I could not imagine what a burglar would want to steal. There were a few obvious candidates. My poor beleaguered purse, fresh off the flying-off-the-roof-of-the-car experiment, with its canceled credit cards, busted phone, and $8. The 11 year-old flat screen 40″ TV, a dwarf by today’s standards. The outdated video games.

And then there was everything else. Here’s a confession for you: Somewhere along the way I forgot to collect the finer things in life.

Here’s a second confession for you: Writing that first confession hurt, because even if you are not supposed to love things, I love my house and its contents. The yellow front door that was decidedly not ajar that night. The garden. The lack of anything new. The items lovingly accumulated through the years from a progression of garage sales, estate sales, auctions, thrift shops. The things that I have painted, and the things that I have sewn (and sown.) The many books. The stories, the memories, the scarred wood, the chips in the china, the colors, the patterns.

I blame this accumulation, along with middle age and nostalgia, for my sudden love of cleaning. It is all so personal. There is a small porcelain terrier, cream with light blue patches and a broken tail, that sits on my kitchen windowsill. It reminds me of my mother, who was in town exactly ten years ago today. At a yard sale, I bought a few things, and holding the terrier, my mom told the seller, “You’re going to give her this dog for free because her birthday is tomorrow.” And the seller did. (Can anyone refuse the mom voice?) For $3, I bought a model of a tobacco barn at another garage sale with my daughter, and as I handed over the money, the seller told me that the wood for the model had come from a barn in a little town I’d probably never heard of: Moultrie. Ah, I said, my childhood home. In the living room, there is the day of the dead skull purchased on a family vacation to Mexico and an apothecary jar of shells that I collected on beach vacations. There is the chair my grandmother would not let me sit on as a child, and there is the far more valuable chair my great-grandmother let me climb all over. And I could go on.

As I sat the couch that night thinking about my situation — and all of the connections, memories, and serendipitous coincidences — I felt so grateful. There was no intruder, and we were all safe. I had not been called upon to test my non-existent knife skills. The things that a burglar would want were things that I didn’t care about. If a burglar wanted to take everything and sell it all at his own garage sale (no doubt netting all of $83), I could accumulate everything I needed again with the people that I love. With this realization, and a belly full of ice cream, I went back to bed, where Chris talked me back to sleep.

ALC

Today Buddy the dog needed a ride to the local pet store. I make it sound so easy, but it is not. He is a 107 pound Golden Retriever-St. Bernard mix, and while I have some weight on him, it is typically not enough to insert him smoothly into a car. (My sister has seen this particular maneuver in action, and laughed solidly for a good five minutes. Note to self: The next dog must be smaller.) So on today’s attempt, I worked on getting Buddy into the car, and I delegated to my 16 year-old daughter exactly two things: 1) my purse — complete with my wallet, phone, checkbook, and (for heaven’s sake) my very favorite, and now discontinued, red lipstick — and 2) a 14 year-old towel — complete with bleach stains, discoloration, and frayed edges (in other words, perfect for a 107 pound dog to lounge on).

Guess which one of these things she left on the roof of the car as we drove off?

As I understand it, nine blocks from home, my purse bounced off the top of the car and into the busiest street in my neighborhood. Where it was retrieved by someone who was not I. A mere 15 blocks from home, we pulled into a parking space in front of the pet store, discovered the loss of the purse, and retraced our steps. No luck.

Over the next few hours, I did several things. I first canceled all of my credit cards and checks in the checkbook. (It is amazingly easy to cut oneself off from all source of funds for the next 7 to 10 days. I now find that I am a wife on an allowance.) I next used technology to watch the progress of  my iPhone all over the streets of Savannah and Chatham County, for rather than driving a few blocks to return my purse to me, its finder decided to go to a shopping plaza that contains a liquor superstore and a Best Buy, then to an outlet mall, and finally to a home in a suburb of Savannah. Clearly, the phone (and all the contents of my purse) were having a better day than I was.

And this is the one that I am hesitant to admit: I yelled at my daughter for being careless. I was angry. Very angry. It was fitting that as I yelled, a vicious thunderstorm raged outside, with Mother Nature punctuating loudly the points being made by Mother ALC.

And if I’m being honest, the very worst part of losing my purse was being angry at my daughter. It felt terrible. Yelling at her didn’t help. I remembered a similar situation when I was 17 years old and my mother was moving me into my dorm room my freshman year of college. It was late, and it was brutally hot, and toward the end of the entire ordeal, I locked the keys in the station wagon. And the yelling began. I felt terrible — it was an accident! — and I recalled it this afternoon, 30 years later, as my daughter through tears said “it was an accident!” That phrase jolted me. Of course it was an accident. And I decided to take a deep breath, shut up, and walk away. Which was the right course.

Once free of the terrible burden of being mad at one of the people I love most, I could then turn my full attention to tracking the progress of my phone, which would lead me to my purse. Did you know that Apple has a feature called find my phone? And that it shows the progress of your phone, either on map or satellite image, and updates it frequently? And did you know that I read every single Nancy Drew mystery? I am not exaggerating here: Every single one. (Is it any coincidence that Nancy Drew and I both have auburn hair and drive blue convertibles? I think not.) But through the virtue of Apple’s technology and public property records, I located the phone in a house in a suburb of Savannah, a 20 minute drive over two different interstates away. So I looked at Chris and said, “Let’s go get my purse.” And Chris replied — and I think these were his exact words — “You have lost your mind.”

Whereupon we reached a compromise, if that’s what you call doing it his way. This evening around 7:30, we went to a police station in the suburb, where I confidently assured the officer that with this information I had, he could solve the crime of the century — The Mystery of the Bouncing Bag, The Case of the Crushed Clutch, The Secret of Wayward Wallet. He was unimpressed. But being a police officer, he agreed to go to the house, knock on the door, and ask about my purse. (I had visions of riding along and solving all sorts of confounding crimes along the way, but alas, he left Chris and me sitting on the curb outside the police station.) He asked for a description of the phone (officer, it’s an iPhone 4s in the cutest black case with a white old school telephone on it!), its value (no more than $100), and whether there was any cash in the purse (yes, $8). Then I offered this: Don’t you want a description of the purse? And without awaiting his answer, I launched into a bright and chattery litany, at about 400 words a minute, of just how cute the purse was. It’s the most darling Kate Spade clutch! And this is the first time I was carrying it. It’s straw, with little straw lemons embroidered on it, and on the front it says “When life gives you lemons,” and on the back it says “Make limoncello!” and as I started to describe the yellow leather zipper tab, he interrupted: “Make lemon Jell-O?” And me: “No, limoncello.”

The struggle is real.

I don’t think that this call was what he had in mind, but he went anyway. Chris and I waited on a curb in the police station’s parking lot for 30 minutes. During that time, we saw a TV news van drive by (“Do you think they’re reporting on my purse?”). We saw another officer leave (“Do you think he’s going in for back-up to retrieve my purse?”). We saw a giant tactical truck (“Do you think that they should have taken that instead to get back my purse?”). (Do you feel sorry for Chris? Perhaps you should.) When I wasn’t focused so intently on cracking the crime of the century, Chris and I talked about some of the screw-ups we had made, and our own bouts of carelessness, and the beauty of letting go of anger. And during this discussion — and I’m not making this up — I looked behind me and saw a rainbow. (“Do you think it will lead the officer straight to my purse?”)

About that time, the original officer and another pulled into the parking lot. The new officer held up my purse, and right there, in suburban Chatham County, I showed all the world my impressive two inch vertical leap. My sleuthing skills had paid off! When the officers knocked on the door, the occupants asked the officers if they had to return everything. (My guess? She wanted to keep the purse because it was so darn adorable. Chris’ guess? They wanted to keep all of my credit cards, checkbook, and ID to commit identity fraud. Who knows for sure?) But as the officer handed me the purse, he pointed to the rainbow and told me that I was a lucky young lady. Boy, am I. Busted phone, canceled credit cards, no access to money for 7 to 10 days, favorite lipstick tube flattened, glasses intact, purse unmolested. No anger at beloved daughter. Husband no more bewildered than usual.

Case closed.

ALC

Chris and I have spent the week at Saint Simons Island, a beach that I have visited for the last 35 years. It is my mother’s favorite place, and after the divorce, there was a time that she briefly considered moving here and starting anew. But she didn’t, even though she loved the island. By saying that she loved the island, I do not mean to imply that my mother loved the beach; instead, she would bring us to, and we would stay at, her best friend’s condominium, located smack-dab in the middle of the island. (In case you doubt that description, I will mention here that the condominium overlooked a small airport.) Vacation meant time in that condominium, with its small pool and expanded cable package. And maybe once a trip, we would load into her station wagon and drive over to the King and Prince, a local resort, where mom gave us this instruction — “Pretend to be rich!” — and we would haughtily unload our gear and sit at the beach right in front. To my mother’s delight, nothing happened on those trips.

This is a rarity in the annals of family vacations, for something always seemed to happen. Like the time my three year-old sister, who was riding in a booster chair in the front seat of the car, kicked the car into reverse — on Interstate 75 in downtown Atlanta. Or the doomed trip to Myrtle Beach, where I had a terrible case of swimmer’s ear and my father had a terrible migraine headache. And let’s not forget when my younger brother threw up a gallon of grape juice all over the front hallway entrance at a swanky hotel on Mackinaw Island. Or the time when, in my grandmother’s care, I broke my wrist, and for a long and painful week, she insisted that it could be treated with baby aspirin and hot baths. Wrong.

And so here I am again in Saint Simons, with a long and glorious history of nothing happening. This vacation had been living up to that billing. So far, my most notable accomplishment had been eating barbecue three days out of the last four, working my way up to being the apex predator on the barbecue food chain. (I accomplished this even knowing that I would return to our cottage and hear the snorts of Precious, the world’s most adorable pig, who lives next door. Oh, the psychic guilt!) My other accomplishments have been equally meager. According to my Fitbit, there was a day where I walked nine miles on the beach, and I have managed to read three entire books in the last 96 hours. It was that type of vacation.

Until all of a sudden, it wasn’t.

About two decades ago — and I’m not exaggerating, it really was 20 years — Chris and I signed up for a paddling tour of the marshes around Savannah. The kayaking instructor told me that I had the best natural stroke that he had ever seen on a beginner, and since that time, I have been a little smug. Clearly, I am a supreme kayaking talent in the raw. And over 20 years, I have managed to kayak about dozen times in borrowed crafts, on relatively still rivers, often with swim friends that I am shepherding along. Confident. Self-possessed. Paddling.

Shortly before this trip, I decided to become a kayak owner, and I found a surf kayak on Craigslist. It is a twitchy little vessel, somewhat hard to steer, and easy to tip. In other words, it is the perfect kayak for a 47 year-old woman who had been told 20 years ago on a three-hour long kayak tour that she had a nice stroke. So on my maiden voyages in this twitchy little kayak, I practiced in deep tidal pools — noting with pleasure that my manicure matched the nose of the kayak (details matter!) — and found that I hated smooth water and loved maneuvering through the chop.

Clearly, It was time to take the kayak out in the ocean and open that baby up.

Except Chris — oh, sensible Chris — thought that I needed to purposely tip over the kayak and either right it or get out of it. I did what any near-pro level kayaker (like me!) would do: I watched a You Tube tutorial THREE TIMES, featuring an instructor in the exact same kayak as I purchased, and figured out how to do an Eskimo roll. Here’s what you do:

Step one: place paddle to side of boat, parallel to the craft.

Step two: kick hip out, like you’re hip-checking someone, to make the craft roll.

Step three: while underwater, use the paddle, along with your hip movement, to right the kayak.

Step four: keep doing it in the 1:07 clip, so that all of the people watching You Tube can see just how easy it is.

Around 4 o’clock this afternoon, I lugged my kayak back out to the tidal pool, replaying the first three steps in my mind. I had this thought — You know, no one really thinks that what she’s about to do could be the very last thing that she ever does — and pushed it out of my mind since a giant storm was blowing in. (Apparently, I get a D minus in the “signs” department.) I struggled to get the skirt on the kayak, got Chris to help me attach it, pushed 25 yards off the beach, waved to Chris, and proceeded to step one. No problem. I then went to step two. No problem. I proceeded to step three.

Big problem.

I got stuck upside down under the kayak and I could not right the boat.

If Chris had been filming me for a You Tube tutorial, the steps would have gone a little something like this:

Step one: place paddle to side of boat, parallel to the craft.

Step two: kick hip out, like you’re hip-checking someone, to make the craft roll.

Step three: make craft roll 180 degrees and then stop.

To be fair, I got my mouth out of the water for two quick breaths (and a lot of salt water), but mostly it was me, upside down, trapped in a kayak, unable to use the pull loop to pull off the skirt. This is the thought that kept going through my brain: “Really? REALLY? This is how it’s going to be?” (Leave it to me to be disgusted, not panicked.) Meanwhile, I kept trying to use the paddle to right myself, kept trying to find the pull loop, kept trying to get my head permanently above water. After sixty seconds or so, I managed to knee off the kayak’s skirt and surface, to find Chris wading into the water toward me.

Here is the strangest thing. I remained calm. I didn’t cry. I didn’t get upset. I didn’t curse. (I have coughed up roughly three million gallons of water in the last three hours, and when I bent over to tie my shoes, water rushed out of my nose.) And even I will admit that there’s a lesson here, probably along the lines of knowing your limitations. But as I sit here on Saint Simons, in this little house near the King and Prince, with its own expanded cable package, I will let you in on a little secret: I’m going back out tomorrow — this time, with Chris standing in the water, close by — and I’m trying to Eskimo roll again. Because that’s what you do. Especially when you’re almost a world class paddler. Like me.

ALC