The Weight of Inherited Baggage
As you may have guessed from Wednesday’s post, I have been diving into deep cleaning this week, and tackling our kayaks was part of that campaign.
I grew up going on family camping trips where we would canoe together. My mom and I and the dogs in the canoe we rented from the campgrounds, my sisters and my dad in the long, skinny canoe we owned. We have several family memories from our times in those canoes, like the chase after my dad’s hat, and the hilarious picture of my sisters hard at work providing paddle power to the boat, focused on their goal of making the canoe move while my dad calmly sat in the stern, the casual rudder. Meanwhile, mom was teaching me how to work as a team with her, and how I could steer the boat either left or right while keeping my paddle on one side. We glanced over to see my youngest sister with metronome precision stroking her paddle through the water, my middle sister paddling merrily, proudly, and quickly, on the opposite side of the canoe, and my dad taking in the beauty of the Adirondack mountains that framed our paddle pond. I wish I had a picture of that moment, the dogs laying in the boat before me, my mom’s expression caught between confusion and delight, and the portrait of personalities backlit by sunlight on water.
My partner does not canoe, but he does kayak, so we have two boats, the banana and the banana-passion-fruit – shorter, wider, and more orange colored. We would love to plan out some longer trips, but the last several years we have barely had the chance to get out in the summer season, and last year we did not get on the water at all.
Yes, we had a busy, packed summer, and that schedule certainly has not changed this spring. If anything, we have even more to do. Yes, my partner was experiencing some serious back issues that stymied our ability to get out a few nice weekends in a row, issues that continue to flare at inconvenient moments. The real reason we did not boat, though, was fear of facing a mess. We knew that before we loaded up the car with the kayaks, we needed to clean the boats, as the responsible boater should do regularly, regardless of size of their vessel. Cleaning the kayaks became a loadstone, an obstacle to doing something we wanted to do – get out on the water, especially in such a way that my partner could add birds to his life list in the Merlin birding app. Yes, our list of chores to do around the house was ever growing, and for every task we crossed off, two or more were added, a hydra of responsibility. Cleaning the kayaks, even as a preparation for a fun outing, became an insurmountable hurdle, and I even began to feel shame about the idea of boating itself, despite my long personal history of enjoying the exercise. Did I feel as if I was letting down the promise of these memories? I wish I had the answer for what was going on in my head. I ended up carrying extra emotional baggage, focused on these unfeeling objects.
We were also afraid the cleaning task was going to be huge; we both anticipated mouse nests or worse contaminating the boats, especially the longer we let them rest, unused, unmoved, on the shelves. This fear had some basis in reality, as we both have seen other evidence of mice in the garage where these boats are stored.
So, in the clean-sweep staycation, these kayaks were high on my list, but I was not looking forward to the task. I knew cleaning the kayaks was going to be more than just those boats, so order of operations was important.
I had to identify the beginning. It is a good place to start, after all. Let me set the stage for you. Our garage was larger, once, now divided in two so both tenants in the building have some storage space. Ours is also our woodworking shop, with radial arm saw, anvil, drill press, and several other hand tools necessary to make furniture. It is not complete with all the necessary tools, but it is a start. We also use this space for storage of the kayaks, the bikes we do not use, since I am not a confident rider, the Christmas bins reside out in the garage, spare wood, the ice cream maker, the candle maker, the coal chimney, skis, AC, and spare care tires. We have a set of rough wooden shelves, three full-length and one half up top, to house the kayaks, Christmas stuff, tires, tools, and wood, but also have some plastic utility shelves and stacking open bins for more storage. When we want to do any work, we have to manipulate the stuff in the space in order to have room, and then return everything to its place when we are done; an inconvenience that adds at least half an hour to every task.
It is burdensome, extra baggage, and at times prevents us from even starting. Why start a task if you have to pre-work before you work?
Why plan a kayak trip when the boats need cleaning first?
Despondent, determined, I looked at the shelves, the kayaks in the middle, Christmas bins on the bottom, random stuff on top – a mix of skis and poles, other kayaking paraphernalia, spare wood, other unknown items, and mouse evidence throughout. It was daunting, the task overwhelming. I wanted to close the garage door, flee inside, away from the pollen, away from the sun – I was already sneezing, and I had yet to stir up the dust and debris.
I double-gloved, donned safety glasses, and started from the top, one thing at a time.
As I worked, I realized the task, while onerous, was not as bad as I feared. The wood was not as gross as I had worried, and only one piece needed to be discarded. The rest, when stacked neatly, filled less room than the previous Jenga-esque tower balanced on lifejackets, and fit easily on the upper half-shelf, making more room in the frequently accessed platform. But I did not return everything back to the shelf, I let it all soak in UV damage while I continued my main task because now, I had reached the kayaks.
The kayaks are stored on one shelf together, spooned. When we first made the shelves, they were sized for the boats we had at the time – the banana and the blue plum. The theory was each boat would get its own shelf, banana on the middle shelf, as it is, and the short, round blue kayak on the top shelf. This is why there is a half-shelf, but plans changed because immediately upon building the storage we realized both the yellow and the blue kayaks could be together on the same shelf. When we exchanged blue for orange, the fit was even easier. Typically, when moving the boats, one person pulls or pushes the end, while the other person guides the middle. My partner, knowing how tricky and heavy these boats are to manage alone, kept reinforcing that I should have help to move them. He is right, I acknowledge. When we work together to move them, haul them on top of my car, it takes the two of us to achieve this maneuver. As he kept advising me, I realized that I was not giving him the reassurance he needed, and this accidental refusal must be weighing on him. I finally promised that when it came time to move the boats, I would see who was around to help.
Care to make a guess?
My neighbor’s car was not present, which actually made moving the boats easier, since sometimes the car blocks our access to the shelves. I did not hear my landlords moving about, either. Not being Snow White, therefore unable to call upon the animals of the forest for their assistance, I considered my promise fulfilled. I set up the sawhorses and towels for padding and started hauling.
I was scared.
I was worried.
What if I came across a dead critter? What if I disturbed a live nest? What if something jumped out and attacked me while I was balancing a boat, and I dropped and shattered our recreation tool?
It was fine. I moved both kayaks, rested them on the grassiest area I could. Nothing jumped out, while there was certainly debris in the boats, it was not nearly as bad as I anticipated. I began to relax into my task. I worried about using a bleach solution on the boats, but needs must, and mouse evidence is gross.
I checked the different compartments in the kayaks, starting with my partner’s boat. He had some unused straps, but otherwise refreshingly empty. I opened the stern compartments on my kayak, found the waist cover, discovered the two openings accessed the same cavity. One compartment remained. I pried off the cover … and gagged. Here was the biohazard. Not mice or other rodents, not a smelly stash of acorns, but something truly unrecognizable. I had inherited toxic baggage from the previous owner.
I have been thinking ever since about the baggage we inherit, all unwittingly. As a pastor of a church, you inherit the feelings your congregation has toward the former pastor, or you receive the other end of the pendulum swing. If the former minister were much beloved, you could be resented, and vice versa. In a romantic partnership, the current relationship inherits the joys and anxieties all parties carry from previous relationships, or relationship attempts. Relocate to a new town but move into a house or property with local history and you inherit the superstitions, the social expectations, and perhaps a skeleton or two, until you can clean out the compartment and make it your own. It is easy to fear the obvious hazards, and be so paralyzed by that fear, deliberately ignoring the trigger feels like the best way to manage the situation, even if it turns out to not be a problem, just an inconvenience. It is the baggage we do not know we carry that drags invisible weights on our spirit.
With the kayaks, we have been lucky. I did not know about this baggage because we did not need the compartment. I did pry the cover open at one point, saw there was something mysterious, and closed the lid again because the space was not needed. I shoved the baggage away from my mind in the interest of getting out on the water. Now, though, the storage can be used. I am no longer carrying around a mysterious toxic mass, and my boat is marginally lighter. I am looking forward to getting out on the water, when the lakes are warm enough to stand in, and feel a sense of accomplishment, both physically and in my mind. I feel relieved.
This summer, if we do not make it out to the water, it will not be because the kayaks are not clean. That baggage has been faced; the lesson being the anticipation was worse than reality, except for that which was not predicted. Life is surprising, and yes, there is toxic baggage along the way. Do not give it permission to fester. Face it, either with determination or with gentle understanding, and give yourself space to be present with your reaction.
What task is weighing you down today? What looms large in your periphery, that when you face it head-on is not so daunting? I always need the reminder to face down those tasks, but every time I do, the lesson is the same – those frightening tasks are never scary for the reason I worried about.