Back on the water

In a long ago blog post, when I was teaching in New Jersey, I wrote about seeing an 8-person shell on the lake I drove past to get to campus on a March morning, an early sign of spring:

It’s an idyllic sight—the long, narrow shell with eight oars slicing the water in unison toward the small stone bridge, the sunlight making the water sparkle as a light wind kicks up ripples along the surface—and it makes me terribly nostalgic for my own college rowing days, the only time in my life when I could identify as an athlete. Never having participated in organized sports, except for one unremarkable season on the track team in high school, I tried out for novice crew because it required no prior experience and no hitting, catching, or throwing of balls of any kind. It’s a grueling and beautiful sport–if the eight rowers synchronize their bodies just right, as if they were one giant muscle, the oars can lift the boat off the water just enough to make it feel like you’re levitating. It’s an incredible feeling. Rowing defined the bulk of my undergraduate experience, until I decided to quit in the middle of my senior year, because I wanted to know what college would be like without crew. I haven’t been back on the water since, but I still miss it when I see those shells on the lake.

That was 16 years after I’d graduated. Post-college and through most of graduate school, I stayed in shape by biking, running, and lifting weights, with some step aerobics thrown in. But I never got back to my alma mater for alumni regattas or other crew events. One of my friends went on to the Olympic trials and continued to find opportunities to row and coach, but I thought rowing, as much as I’d loved it, was firmly in my past.

Then this year, 34 years after my last row, I finally got back on the water. My friend K had encouraged me multiple times to join her at her rowing club in Chicago when she learned that I had rowed. But between work and kids and all the other stuff of life, it felt impossible. Then the pandemic happened and the kids got older, and K switched to a rowing club much closer to us. She sent out information about a “Learn to Row” clinic that the club was offering over two weekends in April to me and a couple of other friends. I was still hesitant, but then L texted to say she was going to sign up and it’d be fun to do together. I enrolled, thinking a refresher might help me decide whether rowing could fit into my life. Another friend, M, joined at the last minute when a planned trip got cancelled.

The rowing club is an LGBTQ+ affirming organization run by two bad-ass women in their 60s. The boathouse is shared by local high school rowing teams and on the first day of “Learn to Row,” the place was bustling with teens and their parents as preparations for a race were underway. The newbie rowers were a mix of genders and ages. We spent half the morning on ergs, practicing the sequence of motions (arms, body, legs) that are foundational, and then moved to the tanks, where we could practice with actual oars in actual water and synchronize our movements with the rower in front of us. The two-hour session ended with a tour of the shells we’d be taking out the next day, the coach pointing out the gunwale, rigger, oar lock, slide. My body twitched with impatience to be back in a boat.

The next morning, because we had to go over how to lift and carry the boats down to the dock, where to put our hands, how to lock in the oars, adjust our foot stretchers, etc. we only had about a half hour of time on the water. Hearing the specialized language of crew again—”coxswain” “weigh enough” “catch” “finish” “feathering the blade” “catching a crab”—unlocked a memory portal. I found myself sharing tidbits from my rowing days: how the novice crew practiced on heavy wooden boats that we needed extra people to help us carry, because we had no upper body strength yet; how the coxswain’s voice would get inside your head; how exciting it was to be bow to bow with another boat in a race. If a classmate looked confused or uncertain, I tried to help with a quick word. When L or M said they were having trouble with a part of their stroke or form, I gave pointers about what might help. Part of me worried I was annoying my friends and classmates, maybe seeming a bit of a show off, a little too eager to let on that I had more experience. But I couldn’t help myself. Like an overstuffed suitcase sprung open, things just spilled out.

The second weekend, we had a lot more time on the water, rowing in pairs, fours, and sixes, learning how to steady the boat, practicing how to join in with the pair already in motion. A club member volunteering in our boat when a participant dropped out asked if it was all coming back to me. Yes, I nodded, definitely. “Yeah, muscle memory,” she said. Rowing again was like slipping into conversation with my college friends, easy and familiar, where time becomes irrelevant. My mind automatically started analyzing my stroke and that of others—I was hesitating at the catch or I was late on the finish, causing my oar to check the boat a little; they’re burying their oar, they’re rushing the slide… All that matters in the boat is making the next stroke better than the last. But this can’t be an individual pursuit; everything has to be done in attunement with fellow rowers, your mind and body simultaneously relaxed and attentive. A handful of times, we got close to that steady state, the boat gliding quietly in between the chnk of the oars turning in their locks. Afterwards, my friends and I buzzed about how fun it was and I came home tired, sore, and beaming.

Life is still busy and there’s not enough time for everything that needs to get done. The crew season started May 1, but I’m delaying joining until July, when other obligations ease up. I will say no to other things if I have to in order to fit this in, to make space for something that’s much more than “working out” or “staying in shape.” Picking up rowing again after all these years is pure play, the pleasure of getting back to what my body used to do that reconnects me to the intense college years of growth and female friendship, and the pleasure of deepening more recent connections as we embark on this next phase of life. Although I can’t speak for my friends, all of us late middle-aged and menopausal, I’m not looking to be 20 again (oh god, no). But in the synchronized motion out on the water, there’s a lightness that’s akin to meditation, a buoying in a heavy world, and I feel ageless.