by Sharon Wood
We pick out two suits, one robin’s egg blue with a knee-length pencil skirt with a slit up the back, and one navy blue double-breasted blazer with a matching pleated skirt. As well, there are a pair of houndstooth pants, a casual pair of black slacks, a white blouse—and a pair of low pumps. “I can’t do heels yet, Ma,” I say. But I will.
Straight after shopping with Mom, I visit my sister, who helps me “clean up,” as she puts it. I’m not used to wearing anything more than mascara, so Barb plucks my Groucho Marx eyebrows and shows me how to put on makeup. “Don’t worry,” she says, “I can make it look subtle.” And she does. Yet despite her efforts, all I can see is clown.
“Okay, well, let’s see the new clothes,” she says. I tell myself that I am no longer the little sister who used to worship her opinion. Yet I am reluctant to model these new clothes for her because I love them and know I won’t after she has her say. She spins me around to get a better look. “Very nice—a little roomy, though. But then you’d look good in anything right now, even if it’s Mom’s taste.” I wince and back out of her place.
At dinner with Dad that night, I tell him about my session with Barb. “I thought, after all I’ve been through, that I might have gained some confidence. Grown up a bit, you know? But still I take whatever she says so personally.”
Dad has been a mender of all things family, the mediator, the smoother of feathers, the lay philosopher and now minister. He laughs, as he often does when I complain—he’s a bit like Laurie that way. Then he says, “If you think you’ve evolved, come spend a week with your family.”
The last thing I do after the week of interviews and appearances before going home to Canmore is spend a few days with Chris up at Whistler to decompress and try to get reacquainted. I haven’t been able to look him in the eyes when he tells me he loves me. One night after we’ve made love he tells me again. But this time he gently cradles and tips my face to bring my eyes up to meet his, and I crack—slowly at first. “Sorry,” I say, then I start blubbering, “I’m just not ready for this—yet. I think we just need to start over again as friends.”
He is underway packing to move his business to Canmore. “Friend, lover or neither,” he tells me, “the train is already in motion. If and when you’re ever ready, I’ll be there for you.”
Chapter 21
On Stage, Off Stage
I return to Canmore in early July. By now I’ve been away for four months and it feels good to be home. And even better when I move in with Marni, and our friends Colin Rankin and Dave Stark. All four of us are in one stage or another of breaking up with partners, so we call our place the Heartbreak Hotel. We share three bedrooms, counting on one of us being away at any given time, and sleep in whichever one is vacant when we get home. Now and then the system fails, and after trying each door and then swearing under their breath, the latecomer ends up on the floor. A floor is all I have anyway, until Chris builds me a bed and buys me a mattress. “With no strings attached,” he says.
It’s hard for the four of us to tear ourselves away from the breakfast table when we’re all home at the same time because we all have so much to talk and laugh about when it comes to our sad state of affairs. This is as normal as I’ve felt since life after Everest began.
I soon fall into a routine of guiding and training for my upcoming Full Alpine Guide’s exam next summer. I rise as early as 3 a.m. to climb and work through long days that will also include giving corporate presentations.
It takes me a month to prepare for my first presentation and audience. Chris, who is well versed in making slide presentations, coaches me: “Don’t spend more than a minute talking about each slide. Too many slides, too much talking, so pare them down. Use the images to cue you for every point. Write your points down on recipe cards.” I wake in the nights, my mind rehearsing, and write down ideas on a notepad I keep at my bedside. Although I thought I would be ready for anything after Everest, speaking to an audience for an hour is unimaginable. When the day comes, pure will marches me to the podium and sees me through. Will is all I can count on for now.
Barry asks if he can come to one of my talks, and how can I say no? I wince when I glance at him at the back of the room. His being there underscores the collision between my life as a member of the tribe who believes modesty and understatement are mandatory virtues, and my life as a perceived hero with a story to tell. It helps when the lights dim and I can’t see him anymore. I begin, “Ours is a story of ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary results.” And I take the audience through the expedition over the next sixty minutes. Although I receive hearty applause, I have an uneasy sense that it is Everest earning the applause.
As people file through to talk to me after the presentation, they say, “That was incredible.” And I know they are referring to the mountain, as if all I need to do is show up. Or they say, “That was an amazing feat you pulled off,” and I hear this as an accolade for what I have done, not the team. I know Barry is hearing these comments and I feel embarrassed. Once the room is empty, and as I am collecting my slides and papers, Barry approaches me. He smiles, grasps my shoulders, tilts his head from one side to the other, examining the woman in front of him, and says, “You’re not ordinary! We’re not ordinary!” His words sting, as they echo my own thoughts. I am uncertain how to get past the awe of Everest to reach an audience with my own voice. I know as he does that my gratuitous self-deprecation isn’t the answer. But I do believe I am an ordinary person trying to accomplish the extraordinary task of meeting my own expectations.
For now I skulk out of town in my businesswoman’s disguise, hoping none of my tribe will see me. Moving between these two worlds—the one I know and the one where I feel like an imposter—I begin to separate myself into two women: the one who guides and climbs, and the one who gives motivational speeches.
I first get a sense of my own voice late that fall on a day when I’m delayed and arrive fifteen minutes late for a presentation. This predicament forces me into a state of mind I know well from when things go sideways in the mountains and there is no choice but to take charge. As I enter the meeting room, I hand my slide carousel to the audio-visual operator and ask him to start fifteen slides into the presentation. With no time to ease my way out of my self-consciousness, I launch right in. Within minutes I become aware of the hush in the room. For the first time, I make eye contact with the audience instead of gazing over their heads. I pause to let my words sink in rather than scrambling to fill the space with noise. Soon I feel these five hundred people are in the moment with me.
When I finish, however, nobody stirs, claps or utters a word. I hover in that silent void for what seems an eternity. Then a single clap breaks the silence. One person pops up, followed by another and another until the whole room is standing, whistling, cheering and clapping. This time, I sense that my message may have earned some of this applause. A thousand butterflies are taking flight inside me. I want more of this.
* * *
The conference season ends in November and I work as a heli-ski guide in the Interior of BC through the winter months. Chris has been hired by the same company to visit their six lodges as a snow safety consultant, but that winter he spends a disproportionate amount of time at the Bobbie Burns Lodge where I’m based. He glides effortlessly through the powder snow, his skis a natural extension of his feet. He coaches me: “Keep your hands in front, get out of the back seat.” And he gives me tips on how to lead groups of guests who will always be right on my tail. At the top of a run, he will slide up beside me, lean in and whisper into my ear, “Take that line”—and I do.
As my speaking engagements start up again in March, Chris becomes my bridge to the business world. My Everest acclaim parachutes me into galas and receptions that precede presentations with blue-chip corporations. Groomed by an upper-class British mother, Chris tutors me in the etiquette of formal tables: the order of utensils used for each course, the right sid
e to take my napkin from, the need to use my butter knife. He adds, “And stop swinging your fork in the air like you’re conducting a symphony!”
He reassures me when I receive a call one morning from a woman representing the University of Calgary Senate telling me that I have been nominated for an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. In panic, I wave madly at Chris to listen in on the conversation.
“I’m not sure I understand,” I tell her. “Are you saying that the university wants to grant me an honorary degree for climbing a mountain? Why?”
“Why, my girl, is because your accomplishment is symbolic for all women—and men for that matter—who are aspiring to greater heights in the world.”
I put my hand over the receiver and hiss at Chris, “I’m a high school dropout! I can’t accept this!”
He whispers, “No one needs to know. Just say yes!”
Public recognition is a deceptive mirror. Close on the heels of the doctorate, the American Alpine Club and the Explorers Club of New York jointly recognize me with the inaugural Tenzing Norgay Award for exceptional mountaineering. As I settle into the back of the limo at LaGuardia Airport, I puff up with the thought that despite being Canadian, these prestigious American organizations deem me worthy enough to fly me to New York City to receive the award from Sir Edmund Hillary himself. I’m heady with the thought of being united with this great man by our historic ascents of Everest. But as Hillary’s huge hand envelops mine, his mouth is smiling but his eyes are not. I read Hillary’s look as confirmation that I am just one of the more than two hundred climbers who have summited this beleaguered mountain. Instantly, I deflate. I should have known better than to fall for the opinions of strangers. The mountain has lulled me into this false sense of greatness, and I begin to resent it.
* * *
Everest becomes uncontainable. The carefully constructed box in which I keep it bursts open at unexpected times and places. Chris takes me to dinner one night to celebrate our engagement. And as the maître d’ leads us to our table, a diner grabs my arm. “Are you the woman who climbed Everest?” he asks.
“Yes,” I reply, as Chris and the maître d’ stand by entirely ignored.
“Let me introduce you to my clients,” he says and proceeds to present me to everyone at the table.
Once Chris and I are seated, he leans in and hisses, “I can’t believe how rude that man was!”
“I’m sorry, I should have said something—at the very least, introduced you. It’s just that he caught me by surprise.”
“No, no,” he says. “It’s not up to you. He should have known better.”
I suck the air in between my teeth, and run my fingers through my hair, thinking, No, I should have known better. I could have prevented this spectacle.
I become increasingly wary of Everest. It opens doors, then elbows me aside. I start out poised and articulate in my presentations, then the mountain takes over. I finish bewildered, as though I’m waking from a spell.
More often than not, an hour of storytelling rouses a standing ovation. But I feel more embarrassed than exultant. The audience rises from their seats for Everest.
I hope to find my feet by returning to the mountains, where I’ve always felt grounded. In the spring of ’87, James and I set out to climb the Paragot route on the North Face of Huascarán Norte in Peru, a dream route that demands our rock- and ice-climbing skills and high-altitude experience to pull off. On our second day out, a softball-sized rock hits me square on the top of my helmet and knocks me senseless. For the rest of the four-day climb, I feel more nervous than engaged—a sure sign that I’ve had enough.
A new problem to solve or a new route to climb used to fulfill me. Every climb was an investment in attaining greater mastery. The passion sustained me—defined me. The realization of what I have lost is frightening.
I count on the comfort of the familiar when James and I return to a summer of guiding and training for our upcoming alpine guide’s exam. In September when the examiners summon me to tell me whether I’ve passed or failed, they are quiet. They don’t look at me, and I know the news isn’t good. Everest, looming and omnipresent, is impotent in this room of qualified men who don’t care.
“It didn’t seem like your mind was on the exam,” says the first examiner. The others nod in agreement. “However, we are granting you a conditional pass. If you can meet these conditions, we will approve you for full alpine certification.”
Although I know my heart isn’t in guiding or in high-altitude climbing anymore, I am disappointed. Later that fall I spend a few days climbing with an examiner and clients to meet the conditions for my certification. But the question that preoccupies me is what will fulfill me. A barely audible voice inside urges me to be patient and have faith.
* * *
Faith carries me through the next year. Without warning, I realize one day when I’m watching Chris rolling on the floor playing with his friend’s two young children that I want to have kids. As I run my fingers through his strawberry blond hair in bed that night, I say, “The way you fawned over those kids today makes me want to take on the biggest science experiment of my life.” I had always seen my reproductive system as an inconvenience—a liability in my arena. Now, I’m fascinated with the miracle.
A year later, Chris sits beaming in the chair beside my hospital bed. The nurse helps turn me and arrange the pillows to prop our newborn son against me. My nose hovers above our baby’s head, taking in his scent. The nurse squishes baby Robin’s face to my breast and I feel him latch on for the first time. Love blows my heart wide open. Chris brushes his tears away.
Just then one of our doctors waltzes in on his rounds. “Well, what was harder,” he asks, “a twenty-four-hour labour followed by a Cesarean, or Everest?”
I am taken aback by this bizarre question. It was well intended, I’m sure, but I resent how that mountain has permeated my life, my identity—even here. Even now!
Marni comes to visit me and her new godson in the hospital the next day. A few minutes later, the nurse scoops Robin up and urges me to take my first walk while Marni can escort me. Every step wrenches my freshly sliced, gutted and stapled belly. With one hand I clutch the bag of jelly that was once my stomach to keep it from jiggling. And with the other, I grip a handrail as I shuffle to a sitting room at the end of the hallway.
“Are we there yet? This feels like my hardest climb ever.” I start snivelling, “What’s happening to me, Marni? What did they do with the woman we knew?” A flood of emotion presses in my throat. My confidence plummets, my world shrinks, I shrink.
She grips my bicep to support me and says, “You’re a mother now.”
“No kidding. How am I ever going to manage anything in this state beyond caring for Robin? I can’t, is how. Marni, I can’t be your friend anymore.”
She laughs. “Oh honey, I’m here to stay—and to give you perspective. You’re in shock after all you’ve been through, and under the influence of some drugs and heaps of hormones too, I imagine. Give yourself some time to recover before you make up your mind about what your life is going to be like and who you will or won’t have room for. I think you’ll be surprised.”
Six weeks after Robin is born, Everest comes calling again when I am contracted to speak to a company based in Calgary. The theme of the talk is accomplishing more with less. I can relate. Twenty kilograms more of me, and much less brainpower. I pull on the only bottoms that fit, a pair of maternity pants, and I cover my top half with a dark blazer. Robin wails when I hand him to our nanny on my way out the door. I hover there, taking one last look at him, as she rocks him in her arms. Looking down at Robin, Ruth croons, “We’ll be fine won’t we, won’t we. Yes, we will.” This kind older British woman says this as much for me as for Robin. I step across the threshold and wonder how I will close the gap between now and speaking at the podium.
A senior partner in the law firm int
roduces me to a mostly male audience—all I see are starched white shirts and cinched ties—filling a smattering of chairs. Intimidating. A few people stand in the back close to the door, ready to bail.
A bloom of milk soaks my blouse as I step up to the podium. I congratulate myself on the choice of the loose dark blazer for this occasion. Blank faces stare back at me. I reach for help and Albi flashes through my thoughts. Some have judged him arrogant for his brash confidence, but he believed he was good at whatever he took on, and therefore he was remarkably effective. With his example in mind, I begin. “You might wonder—what does climbing Mount Everest have to do with you? Everything,” I declare.
The audience asks a surprising number of questions afterward, including, of course, “Once you’ve climbed the highest mountain in the world, what’s next?”
I hesitate, then say, “What’s next is this,” and I flash the last image I’ve held back uncertainly: a picture of a swaddled newborn Robin. “Everest was just training for this: the biggest adventure of my life.”
Everyone leaps from their seats and claps. I keep the picture of Robin up on the screen, rejoicing inside for their endorsement of “what’s next.” For the first time, Everest isn’t the darling of the show.
When our second darling, Daniel, arrives in February of ’92, Chris is in increasing demand as a snow safety consultant, which takes him away most of the winter and mires him in reports and contract bids in the off-seasons. A dozen or more speakers’ bureaus now represent me. They warn me to keep building my career or I will lose it, so I accept up to fifty engagements a year throughout North America. Nannies come and go, and we hire an office manager. I let go of guiding for the less time-consuming yet more stress-inducing work of speaking. The reality of what needs to happen, and all at once, in a woman’s thirties if she wants to establish a family, a career and a secure future, rankles me. Stressed, hormonal and strapped for time does not make me a good wife or mother at times. Then just when I think I can’t take on another commitment, a wave of inspiration transports me from feeling beleaguered to impassioned.