But I listened to her that day and tried to bank my fires, and eventually my training rituals became an end unto themselves.
We missed the entrance for our division that year, which for first-timers is decided by lottery. I think we were both relieved, for two reasons. One was that we had started training late in the season and weren’t ready to race. The other, more revealing reason was that Caroline and I were each so goal-oriented—she once told me that “mastery” was her favorite feeling—that we wanted thenext season, and the next, to have an occasion to set our hopes and focus toward. Like most odysseys, ours on the Charles was more about the journey than the finish line. The metaphor of rowing may have been what we loved the most: the anticipation, the muscles spent and miles logged, the September harvest moon. Because we both possessed that single trait that makes a lifelong rower—endurance—we declared that we would row the Head together in our seventies, when the field had thinned sufficiently to give us a fighting chance. The fantasy would fuel us for two more winters.
After the 2000 regatta had come and gone, in late October, we took out the double to see how we might have measured up. It was a fiasco from the start: The boat had been rigged for giants, which meant that we were half prostrate during a full stroke; we didn’t realize this mechanical mishap until we were too far out on the water to make adjustments. The wind picked up, accompanied by haphazard gusts that made the river a sea of chop. Then the rain started—a cold autumn rain that pelted us from behind and threatened our nerves as well as our grip on the oars. Caroline responded to these horrid conditions by rowing harder. My stroke grew ragged and then uneven, until she finally told me to stop rowing altogether; if my rhythm was too far off, she would be battling against me. Frustrated by my own performance, I was in awe of hers: The worse the rain and the strongerthe current, the steadier she became. We rowed the entire course, cheering as we crossed a deserted finish line. We were soaked from rain and waves, elated from laughter and exertion. I lay back in the boat and let Brutita row us home.
8.
THAT DECEMBER, A BLIZZARD STRANDED ME FOR days in Texas, where I had gone to see my family for the holidays. I finally managed to get on a flight that was rerouted through Chicago to Massachusetts. Caroline, in touch by phone during the ordeal, had taken Clementine to my apartment an hour before my flight was scheduled to arrive in Boston. At the end of a marathon travel day, I sank into the back of a cab at Logan Airport, wanting nothing more than to be in my own home, wanting my couch and the feel of Clementine’s ruff and the sound of Caroline’s voice on the phone. “Hostage to attachment,” I remember thinking, the words coming out of nowhere. Leaving town was what told me, reminded me, how much I relied on these two creatures to give purchase to the emotional ground of my life. If by now this realization was more consoling than unnerving, it was still a radical departure from my norm. However skittish Caroline could be, I may have been worse—more stubborn,more reflexively prideful—when the real bruisers of life showed up. In crisis, I circled my wagons, more afraid of being disappointed by someone than of going it alone.
For reasons that probably have to do with temperament and heritage both, I had spent a lifetime cultivating a little too much independence. Absurd or commendable, a lot of this behavior was unnecessarily severe. I’d hitchhiked long distances alone in my twenties; for years I’d swum the Wellfleet ponds after Labor Day, when they were deserted, until an early autumn thunderstorm convinced me this was a bad idea. Such feats, I privately held, were heroic in correlation to the amount of suffering invoked. Even after I stopped drinking, I never wanted my solitude to limit my range, so I signed up for work
We missed the entrance for our division that year, which for first-timers is decided by lottery. I think we were both relieved, for two reasons. One was that we had started training late in the season and weren’t ready to race. The other, more revealing reason was that Caroline and I were each so goal-oriented—she once told me that “mastery” was her favorite feeling—that we wanted thenext season, and the next, to have an occasion to set our hopes and focus toward. Like most odysseys, ours on the Charles was more about the journey than the finish line. The metaphor of rowing may have been what we loved the most: the anticipation, the muscles spent and miles logged, the September harvest moon. Because we both possessed that single trait that makes a lifelong rower—endurance—we declared that we would row the Head together in our seventies, when the field had thinned sufficiently to give us a fighting chance. The fantasy would fuel us for two more winters.
After the 2000 regatta had come and gone, in late October, we took out the double to see how we might have measured up. It was a fiasco from the start: The boat had been rigged for giants, which meant that we were half prostrate during a full stroke; we didn’t realize this mechanical mishap until we were too far out on the water to make adjustments. The wind picked up, accompanied by haphazard gusts that made the river a sea of chop. Then the rain started—a cold autumn rain that pelted us from behind and threatened our nerves as well as our grip on the oars. Caroline responded to these horrid conditions by rowing harder. My stroke grew ragged and then uneven, until she finally told me to stop rowing altogether; if my rhythm was too far off, she would be battling against me. Frustrated by my own performance, I was in awe of hers: The worse the rain and the strongerthe current, the steadier she became. We rowed the entire course, cheering as we crossed a deserted finish line. We were soaked from rain and waves, elated from laughter and exertion. I lay back in the boat and let Brutita row us home.
8.
THAT DECEMBER, A BLIZZARD STRANDED ME FOR days in Texas, where I had gone to see my family for the holidays. I finally managed to get on a flight that was rerouted through Chicago to Massachusetts. Caroline, in touch by phone during the ordeal, had taken Clementine to my apartment an hour before my flight was scheduled to arrive in Boston. At the end of a marathon travel day, I sank into the back of a cab at Logan Airport, wanting nothing more than to be in my own home, wanting my couch and the feel of Clementine’s ruff and the sound of Caroline’s voice on the phone. “Hostage to attachment,” I remember thinking, the words coming out of nowhere. Leaving town was what told me, reminded me, how much I relied on these two creatures to give purchase to the emotional ground of my life. If by now this realization was more consoling than unnerving, it was still a radical departure from my norm. However skittish Caroline could be, I may have been worse—more stubborn,more reflexively prideful—when the real bruisers of life showed up. In crisis, I circled my wagons, more afraid of being disappointed by someone than of going it alone.
For reasons that probably have to do with temperament and heritage both, I had spent a lifetime cultivating a little too much independence. Absurd or commendable, a lot of this behavior was unnecessarily severe. I’d hitchhiked long distances alone in my twenties; for years I’d swum the Wellfleet ponds after Labor Day, when they were deserted, until an early autumn thunderstorm convinced me this was a bad idea. Such feats, I privately held, were heroic in correlation to the amount of suffering invoked. Even after I stopped drinking, I never wanted my solitude to limit my range, so I signed up for work
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