A Biography of Murray Enkin

That in high school or university, I could write a paper with the professor's eyes in mind, and bring it to a certain level. Or I could write it with the notion that I would let Daddy read it. Just that thought made me write more thoughtfully, follow a train of logic, go deeper, question the givens. This last was the main one: question the givens.
Every teaching from Daddy always has the J stroke. You know what I mean: when you paddle a canoe, any large sweeping paddlestroke is followed by a little switchback stroke to correct for oversteering in a certain direction, to keep the canoe on a straight course, to say, "Maybe there's truth in what I said, but take it with a grain of salt, because at one level it's real and at another level, like all teachings, it's nonsense. Question the givens."
I remember in the elevator after a prenatal class where Daddy was the priest of a new religion, psychoprophylaxis, prepared childbirth, I talked about his mention of effleurage, the stroking of the outside of the tummy, to comfort the inside. The idea that we can keep nerve endings busy on the skin, and take away receptor activity internally, where the discomfort is happening. "Don't take it too seriously", Daddy said.
Once a boy asked me to travel. Daddy said no. But then he said, "You're allowed to question me. You're allowed to give me your point of view". Oh. He's not going to do the deciding for me in this life..
Later, when he entitled a talk, "From Cradle to Credo", I wrote, "What Cradle? What Credo?" I had a laundry basket, not a cradle. And no credo was clear. My response to the writing pro mpt, "I grew up in a house filled with......", was "I grew up in a house filled with love and contradictions".
"You are what you pretend to be", Daddy reminds me. Expect inconsistency. Embrace uncertainty. Stand, at once, inside, and outside, seeing the absurdity of all things. All things except canoe trips, where motivations are real and the looncalls over the morning lake are what living is really about, where a J stroke really does keep the canoe steady on its course, keeps you from veering too far in any direction.
A biography of Murray Enkin. We paddled a canoe, my Mommy in the bow, calling out the rocks and the clear passage through the rapids, me in the middle, feeling loved, and my Daddy in the stern, paddling J strokes.