that. But he looks serious.
“I’m serious,” he says, reading my mind.
Friday comes and goes. I don’t know how to turn in something terrible. My professor calls me back in.
“How about you give me whatever you have by Tuesday.”
“All I have are crummy sentences and quotations.”
“Great. I’ll take those.”
I know what my professor is trying to do, but I can’t turn in something average. I think, It’s so late, it needs to be extraordinary. So, I stay up all night and write a paper that is ten pages longer than the assignment, with a dozen extra references. I turn it in, finally, ten days late. Then I’m sick for a week. I assume that everyone’s college experience is like this: all-nighters, followed by sickness, followed by all-nighters, followed by sickness. In my world, it is.
On the upside, I have a boyfriend. He is older than me. I look up to him and want to please him. The first time we have sex, I leave my shirt on. I’m ashamed of my flat chest. He’ll be disappointed. I move like a gymnast to dazzle him with my flexibility. I don’t notice that he is trying to slow me down. I am so busy trying to entertain him, I feel like I’ve got a top hat and cane. He doesn’t ask what I like and don’t like, but it doesn’t matter. I have no idea. I feel empty inside.
When things aren’t working between us, I can’t bring myself to break up with him. Fear says, “How can you end it? You started it. You are selfish and cruel.” Instead of telling him that my feelings have changed, I avoid him. Then I cheat on him. The relationship ends. I am devastated. But I am also relieved. Then I feel bad for feeling relieved. I move so fast into the next relationship I don’t take the time to think about who I am and what I want. I just want someone to hold me. I just want the emptiness I feel to go away.
#
I am twenty-one. It’s a sticky, hot afternoon, and I have one more sales call to go. I graduated from college and I am selling knives so I can go hike the Pacific Coast Trail. Yesterday, I drove one-hundred miles to sell a bagel spreader. Today, I knock on the heavy door of a three-storied, red-bricked home to sell a carving set. This address was given to me by a friend of a friend. A woman dressed in a tailored gray blazer and skirt lets me in. She is short, but towers over me with her suspicious stare and firm handshake. I ask for a tomato and a penny. I dice the tomato then decoratively coil the penny into a pig’s tail with our best-selling kitchen scissors. I look down at my notes for the final question, “So, Mrs. Bartlett, do you want the Classic Carving Set with scissors or the Holiday Carving Set with a tomato trimmer?” Then I stop. I know that name. I suddenly know exactly where I am. This is Noah Bartlett’s kitchen and I am pitching his mom a carving set. Years ago, Noah and I shared first prize in a schoolwide essay contest.
Noah’s mom suddenly recognizes me, too. She looks at me hard and does not mince words, “Noah is in China. He is writing his second book with his Princeton professor. And you…” She pauses and looks at me with a mix of pity and judgment, “What are you doing?”
“Selling knives. So I can go hiking,” I stammer.
“Don’t you have any ambition?”
The words sting. Everyone is doing more and succeeding more than I am. If I am as smart as those elementary school teachers thought, why am I working a job that has me driving a hundred miles to sell a bagel spreader? I’m a disappointment to my parents. I get out of that house as quickly as I can. Then I quit. I hike a long section of the Pacific Coast Trail, but only after I polish my resume and send out fifty applications for “real” jobs. I am going to change the world.
I become a teacher, like my mother, my aunt, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother before me. I love my job. I like the look of concentration on my students’ faces. I love clean chalkboards and the smell of sharpened pencils. I imagine all the discoveries my students and I are going to make as we read and explore new ideas. But I am surprised by the question I hear most often. My students ask, “Is this right?” as in, “Is this answer right?” or “Did I do this essay right?” They don’t ask questions born from curiosity, but from fear. I understand my students’ desire to please and to perform too well. But that doesn’t help my students who collapse on my couch in anxious tears. They say, “I’m so tired of needing perfect grades, perfect test scores, and the perfect body.”
How do we banish the idea that we have to be perfect before we begin?
2
I meet my future husband in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is a clear, calm day. I am the only beginner among expert kayakers going to Anacapa Island, thirteen miles off Santa Barbara, California.
What am I doing here? I left a great teaching career to take a job working for a famous mountaineer, Rick Ridgeway. I met him and his wonderful wife, Jennifer, when I was teaching their oldest daughter. I help Rick develop book ideas and film proposals for National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. He works project-to-project, never knowing when the next paycheck might roll in. This uncertainty makes me anxious, which makes ours a good working partnership. He goes on risky adventures, while I stay back in the office and secure the next contract.
One week, Rick asks to see me. He doesn’t like meetings, at least not the conference-room kind. He prefers “floating meetings.” This means that we get together at the local surf break and talk business. I zip up my wetsuit and wax my board nervously, because the waves are a fair size today and I don’t know how I’ll be able to keep up with Rick, much less concentrate on agenda items, as the waves crash around us. But I can’t let him down.
I walk to the water’s edge and step reluctantly into the freezing, roiling ocean. Rick surfs powerfully, while I flail on my giant longboard. Between waves, we float on our boards and I listen to Rick’s latest idea for an expedition, a book, and for conserving more wild spaces around the world. We discuss plans and logistics. He is energized and tossing tasks at me quickly. How am I going to remember all these details? I wish there was a way to keep a pen and notebook in my wetsuit. As I am daydreaming about waterproof paper, Rick surprises me with a request.
“I want you to interview someone for my next book who will only be in the country for five days.” Rick says.
“So you want me to meet him at the airport?” I guess.
“No, the whole time he’ll be in a kayak. I want you to paddle across open ocean with him. Have you ever been in a sea kayak?” Rick asks.
“No,” I say.
“Well, want to try something new? What do you say?”
Before I can answer, Yvon Chouinard paddles his surfboard next to us. Rick and Yvon are old friends, having climbed together in Tibet, Bhutan, Chile, and Argentina, among other places. Yvon and his wife, Melinda, started the Patagonia clothing company just a block from here. Yvon often surfs at this local break, and sometimes joins us.
Now there are two adventure legends looking at me, waiting for my answer. How can I say no? I remember one of Rick’s favorite sayings, “Commit. Then figure it out.”
“Well, if you think I can do it…”
Yvon is a man of few words. He sits back, pivots his board to catch a wave, and looks at us.
“Enough talk. C’mon, let’s surf,” Yvon says with a mischievous grin. He pops up on the wave and glides effortlessly down its liquid-green face. Rick stares
