out in wind gusts and rain and came back spent and calm. Caroline had warned me that my entire relationship to the river would change, and to be careful driving—with the Charles River winding alongside Memorial Drive, it was easy to forget about oncoming traffic if you were rubbernecking the condition of the water. “The river will become a character in your life,” Caroline told me. “You’ll be amazed how much influence it will have on your day.”
By autumn, I had mapped out an entire country of flora and fauna, much of it invisible from land. I began to set my internal clock of miles logged by the landmarks I encountered. There was the man who played bagpipes each morning on a bend in the river—“The Halls of Montezuma” and, if I was lucky, “Amazing Grace”—and the muskrat a quarter mile upstream, appearing with such reliability that I could believe it was for my benefit. (There was also, less decorous, the exhibitionist on the wooded end of the river who flashed women rowers, about whom Caroline had warned me.) Most of all there was the arc and geography of the river and my place upon it. By September the goslings of spring would be learning to dive on their own; the marshes had turned from green to golden rose. All of it offered a palette in time and space where beauty was anchored to change.
I usually saw Caroline on her way upriver: the blond ponytail, the back of a dancer, a stroke as fluid as it was exact. (She never saw me until I called out to her, andeven then she had to squint. The glasses she needed and refused to wear never left the glove box of her car.) Some days we would meet on a wide stretch by the finish line of the Head of the Charles. The moment she squared her blades and stopped, Caroline checked her watch, sometimes surreptitiously; even on the gentlest of rows, she was gauging her time. Then she would watch my stroke and give me a drill to occupy me for a few days. “Use your abs for the recovery,” she would say. “Stop checking behind you; you’re clear. Use your thumbs before you feather!” I thrilled to the language as well as the instruction.
In the summer of 2000, when I was forty-nine and Caroline was about to turn forty-one, we decided that we had one last chance to realize a dream: to row in a double in our age division in the Head of the Charles. We were mistaken about the age stipulation, which accepts any pairing with an age average over forty, but the fantasy stuck, and it gave us a mission for the season. It was the sort of goal we both loved, one that we could discuss endlessly while incorporating its training demands into our daily routines. Because we both fell into the under-130-pound weight division, we decided that we would bill ourselves as the Literary Lightweights—good for a few laughs on the river, we thought, and maybe even a corporate sponsor or two. Morelli, who had long wanted Caroline to show her stuff in a race, had T-shirts made for us with a tiny oarsman on the breast; he promised tohang off the bridges and photograph us during training sessions. As the more accomplished rower, Caroline would steer while I rowed stroke, which meant that she would have to slow her pace to mine.
This handicap was of no consequence to her and mattered greatly to me. I added stomach crunches and leg lifts to my regimen, and started taking my pulse after sprints on the water. I plied Caroline with progress reports: stroke rate, heart rate, technical or psychic breakthroughs. She endured my single-mindedness and placated me when she could. “I’m afraid I’ll fail you,” I said one day, with great seriousness; my German shepherd spirit at the ready, I had already turned a lark into a challenge of enormous weight.
“I will
only
do this with you if it can be fun,” she told me, and my antennae went up. “Fun” was a nebulous concept for both of us; her therapist was always trying to impose it on her. Fun was far more difficult to get a handle on than zeal.
By autumn, I had mapped out an entire country of flora and fauna, much of it invisible from land. I began to set my internal clock of miles logged by the landmarks I encountered. There was the man who played bagpipes each morning on a bend in the river—“The Halls of Montezuma” and, if I was lucky, “Amazing Grace”—and the muskrat a quarter mile upstream, appearing with such reliability that I could believe it was for my benefit. (There was also, less decorous, the exhibitionist on the wooded end of the river who flashed women rowers, about whom Caroline had warned me.) Most of all there was the arc and geography of the river and my place upon it. By September the goslings of spring would be learning to dive on their own; the marshes had turned from green to golden rose. All of it offered a palette in time and space where beauty was anchored to change.
I usually saw Caroline on her way upriver: the blond ponytail, the back of a dancer, a stroke as fluid as it was exact. (She never saw me until I called out to her, andeven then she had to squint. The glasses she needed and refused to wear never left the glove box of her car.) Some days we would meet on a wide stretch by the finish line of the Head of the Charles. The moment she squared her blades and stopped, Caroline checked her watch, sometimes surreptitiously; even on the gentlest of rows, she was gauging her time. Then she would watch my stroke and give me a drill to occupy me for a few days. “Use your abs for the recovery,” she would say. “Stop checking behind you; you’re clear. Use your thumbs before you feather!” I thrilled to the language as well as the instruction.
In the summer of 2000, when I was forty-nine and Caroline was about to turn forty-one, we decided that we had one last chance to realize a dream: to row in a double in our age division in the Head of the Charles. We were mistaken about the age stipulation, which accepts any pairing with an age average over forty, but the fantasy stuck, and it gave us a mission for the season. It was the sort of goal we both loved, one that we could discuss endlessly while incorporating its training demands into our daily routines. Because we both fell into the under-130-pound weight division, we decided that we would bill ourselves as the Literary Lightweights—good for a few laughs on the river, we thought, and maybe even a corporate sponsor or two. Morelli, who had long wanted Caroline to show her stuff in a race, had T-shirts made for us with a tiny oarsman on the breast; he promised tohang off the bridges and photograph us during training sessions. As the more accomplished rower, Caroline would steer while I rowed stroke, which meant that she would have to slow her pace to mine.
This handicap was of no consequence to her and mattered greatly to me. I added stomach crunches and leg lifts to my regimen, and started taking my pulse after sprints on the water. I plied Caroline with progress reports: stroke rate, heart rate, technical or psychic breakthroughs. She endured my single-mindedness and placated me when she could. “I’m afraid I’ll fail you,” I said one day, with great seriousness; my German shepherd spirit at the ready, I had already turned a lark into a challenge of enormous weight.
“I will
only
do this with you if it can be fun,” she told me, and my antennae went up. “Fun” was a nebulous concept for both of us; her therapist was always trying to impose it on her. Fun was far more difficult to get a handle on than zeal.
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