Course Correction (2 page)

“Uh, you do?” he replied.

Hearing his reticence—not exactly the first no-confidence vote I'd ever heard—I felt something inside lock me into place, defiance clicking into determination. The universe had finally nudged my way and I was not going to squander this chance. I remembered sunlight dancing on water, the rush of calm that surrounded me as I watched those boats glide up the Charles River, like a soft embrace that I could lean into without falling. Nor did I forget the smoothness of the strokes and the orderly repetition of the rowing motion. Again I felt the stirring of an alien feeling: was this hope?

I said, “Yeah, I do want to row. So how do I start?”

He took his cap off and ran his hand through his thinning hair, then plopped the hat back on his head and adjusted the brim downward again. “Um, let's see …,” he said.

Nat Case, the varsity women's crew coach, behaved entirely in character that first meeting. At 5′7″, I was a runt as a rower. Nat ascribed to the belief that mass moved boats: in choosing recruits, he sought out the advantage that height conveyed. I would discover he prized it above other, less obvious but more valuable traits.

I pried out of him that learn-to-row sessions had already started in the gym and would continue every afternoon for the rest of the week. I gave him my name and made sure he wrote it on the schedule for the following day. I held out my hand for a flyer until he gave me one.

“Thanks,” I said. “I'll see you tomorrow.” My voice, perhaps, but the universe had spoken.

Of course I didn't go to my first rowing lesson alone: fear and anxiety held my hands, tugging me to slow down and rethink matters. Remind me why you think you can do this? Since when are you a jock? But eagerness and excitement had hold of me, too, and they were flying. Nothing could bring me down. I felt like skipping as I walked.

Payne Whitney Gymnasium towered thirteen stories at the edge of campus. Its Gothic design mimicked the majesty of a cathedral; this building meant business. As I stepped into its cavernous entry for the first time, I had no idea what my future held. I would attend more practices in this building, and hear myself utter more pleas for mercy within its walls, than the most devout religious convert would attend services or pray for deliverance.

I found my way down to the dank basement, home of the rowing tanks. There were three, each identified with a spare, utilitarian designation, A, B, and C, side by side in separate four-story-high rooms that resembled airplane hangars. I found my way to the one assigned to the girls, in the basement's west corner. Dingy yellow brick covered the walls. Half windows, cut high into the back walls, allowed in slits of natural light. Plain light fixtures with bare bulbs hung from the ceilings. The machinery propelling the water in the tanks hummed. I had entered a factory, noisy and purposeful, whose workers focused on maximal productivity, efficient use of resources, consistent effort: a blue-collar haven in the bowels of an Ivy League world.

Tank C looked like a giant bathtub sunk about four feet into the gym floor, with a narrow island bisecting its entire length. The bottom was painted a graying white, with cheery pale blue walls: gazing into the tub was like looking at a watery reflection of a cloudy tableau, with blue sky horning in at the edges of dour weather. Safety railings surrounding the tank had mirrors attached to their insides to allow rowers to check and correct their technique.

Eight stations were dug into the tank's island, one behind another, each with its own equipment. A small wooden backless seat with wheels slid back and forth on a pair of narrow metal tracks. Directly in front lay the foot-stretcher, a simple mechanism comprising a heel cup at the bottom and an adjustable leather flap on top that accommodated all foot sizes, angled at forty-five degrees.

Oarlocks were bolted on strips of wood that ran the full length of
the island along both edges. They looked ancient: rusty metal holders with gates that locked into place to prevent oars from bouncing out during a stroke. Each station had one oar, alternating port and starboard sides. The wooden oars had thick handles, smoothed by many hands, blotched with blood and stained by sweat, and collars attached at the same place along the shaft of every oar. When the oars were extended through the oarlocks to row, the collars rested against the locks, preventing the oars from sliding too far into the water. The oars' narrow blades were painted in two horizontal stripes: Yale blue on the water edge, pristine white across the top.

The actual tank snared only about one-third of the floor space in each room. Swedish bars climbed the back walls. Cracked gray mats covered square chunks of the floor, with weights and barbells scattered on them. A pair of odd-looking machines—movable wooden seats perched on top of a sturdy steel base, which connected to wooden handles that looked like wings—occupied a far-off corner. A sixty-minute clock with a prominent second hand was bolted to a stand behind the handles.

A few girls lounged against the railing, observing the rowers in the tank. I wondered who they were. Perhaps more newbies like me? They were talking and smiling among themselves, whereas I knew no one. Several other girls were rowing in the tank, following the person in front of them. Their movements looked a tiny bit like the rowing I remembered from the Charles River. I watched them for a moment and then spied the coach I'd spoken with the day before. He was holding a clipboard, had a pencil tucked behind his ear, wedged under his baseball cap, and had hiked up one of his long legs against the outer wall of the tank. He leaned against his bent knee as he closely watched the rowers.

“Hi, I'm here to learn to row.”

He glanced my way, responding gruffly, “Hmmm, hi. What's your name?” I told him and he scanned his list. He didn't find it; this seemed impossible, as I'd watched him write it down. But no matter. I stood and waited until he added my name to the sheet.

“This group is just finishing up. You can join the next session.”

My turn finally came to step in. I walked up the short flight of steps and down to the strip of seats. I wanted to shriek and do a victory
dance, but everyone else was just choosing a place and sitting down, so I said nothing. Heart pounding, thoughts buzzing, ready to dive in, I sat in the first available seat, behind three other people, and did what they did. How am I going to hold onto my oar with such sweaty hands?

The foot-stretcher's thongs were way too big for my bare feet, so I slid my sneakered feet under the cracked leather straps. I cradled my oar handle in my lap and rolled back and forth a couple of times on the seat. Is my butt ever gonna get sore sitting on this skinny thing. I shoved the oar out toward the side of the tank and grasped the handle, keeping the blade free of the water. Rough wood met my soft, damp palm. The coach was talking gibberish. What the hell am I supposed to do? I kept my gaze glued to the person in front of me.

Holding my oar, I maneuvered my blade so that its edge was perpendicular to the water and thrust my arms straight out in front of me. I crept up the slide on my rolling seat and when there was no place else to go, suddenly my oar dropped into the water. How did that happen? What did I do? I tightened my grip and pulled against the oar. It followed my lead and suddenly fantasy yielded to reality.

We were indoors, confined in a crummy half-lit basement. The scenery didn't change. There was no boat to move, only the sound of motor-driven water. The wind wasn't blowing lightly through my hair; no sunshine beat down, sparkling the water running along the boat's hull; the air smelled slightly stale. But I didn't care. I was rowing.

The oar felt heavy in my hands. I had to concentrate on gripping firmly with both hands to pull it through the water, let it turn in a looser hold as it exited the water, hold it flat until the next stroke was about to start, then reposition its blade edge perpendicular to the water and drop it in at the right time at the right depth, in sync with the person in front of me.

There was nothing flawless about my first attempts. But I learned how to feather and square up, and heard about the different parts of the stroke. I figured out the girls on the perimeter of the tank were the varsity rowers, muscular, oozing confidence, experienced and expectant, and on the hunt for new teammates. I watched them surreptitiously while tussling with my oar. Perhaps their standards were different from the coach's. Maybe they would welcome unbridled enthusiasm. Maybe
they would recognize themselves in my show of raw desire, instead of being sure at a single glance that I had nothing to offer and lacked the prerequisites for success. I had no idea. All I could do was focus on the girl in front of me and try to follow her, sliding back and forth on my moving seat, putting my oar in the water and taking it out, dancing to the new rhythm I heard that day on the Charles and finally had a chance to make my own.

“Okay, we're done for today.” Nat spoke through the megaphone above the rushing water. “There's a sign-up sheet for practice times tomorrow posted on the board. Make sure you write your name in an open time slot.”

Okay, made it through that. Do I have to get out now? I glanced up to see another group of girls waiting for their turn. When can I do it again? My turn over, I pulled my oar across my seat, leaving the blade balanced high above the moving water. I slid my shoes out from the leather thongs and walked down the tank's stairs to the floor.

As I waited behind a couple of other girls to pick a practice time, one of the observers came over and introduced herself as the team's captain. Her name was Chris Ernst.

“How'd you like it?”

She was short, but there was nothing petite about her. Her blonde hair, cut close to her head but not styled, played to its own tune, with random strands curling in defiant tufts. Blue veins ran down the insides of her arms from her shoulders to her wrists. I had never seen such bulging biceps on a girl before. I could feel intensity seeping from her skin like sweat.

Her blue eyes, framed by rimless round glasses, looked right into mine. She seemed to be searching for something. I wanted to give it to her, whatever it was.

“It was good. I'm ready for more. There's so much to think about … how do you put it all together?”

She smiled, but the intensity didn't disappear. “Just keep coming back and you'll figure it out.”

“Don't worry, I will.” I said it lightly, but I could feel my determination stirring again.

“Wait until we row outside. It's so much better when you're in a
real boat. We'll go to the lagoon next week.”

We! Did you hear that?

I'd spent my first several days of college over my head, gasping for air. Now, down in the basement of Payne Whitney, a shrimp of a powerhouse tossed me a buoy. Maybe I could find my niche among a new band of sisters, fit in without having to talk about myself, and make friends by sharing the challenges that rowing seemed to promise.

I penned my name in one of the available slots on the sign-up sheet and left the tanks swinging my arms happily.

I gloried in the late summer heat as I left my dorm room for my morning class. New Haven was wrapped in a comforting, muggy embrace. As I walked across campus in a T-shirt and shorts, I turned my face to the sun, closing my eyes and basking in its affectionate warmth. I could tolerate anything on a day like this.

Hours later, I had no one to complain to as I jogged at slug speed in the heat, sweat soaking my brand-new women's crew training gear, heading to my first outdoor rowing session on the lagoon two miles from the university's main campus. Yellow school buses regularly departed from outside Payne Whitney to drive students on the football, soccer, and cross-country teams to the athletic fields that lay just beyond the lagoon: for some reason, however, none of the rowers were allowed to ride them.

I zigzagged through dilapidated New Haven, past houses with shutters hanging off hinges, peeling paint, and rusty chain-link fences. People peered at me from the safe shade of their front porches. What the hell was I doing, running through this neighborhood, in this heat? They may have been wondering, but I wasn't. A chance to row in a real shell awaited me at the end of my slog.

My legs felt like lifeless logs. My arms were ten-ton steel beams. My breathing sounded like the chug of a steam engine. I arrived at the lagoon just in time for practice, aching for a drink and a rest, but ready to row.

The lagoon was part of a public park, but it looked like a war zone. The metal boathouse, covered with graffiti, thick chains securing the boat bay door handles, and surrounded by hard-packed sandy dirt and
sparse grass, looked defenseless and alone.

Nat squinted at the group, divided us into port and starboard rowers, then into groups of eight, with four ports and four starboards, adding a coxswain to round out the crews. We entered the boathouse empty-handed: we came out with a three-hundred-pound wooden shell digging into eight novices' shoulders. My first encounter with the task of hoisting and carrying a sixty-foot-long boat tempted me to drop it and walk away.

But we reached the splintered wooden dock a few hundred feet away without anyone abandoning ship. Following Nat's precise commands, we thrust the boat off our shoulders and up above our heads, grabbed the outriggers, turned the boat over, brought it down to our waists, and placed it in the water. Then we managed to stuff nine people into a shell less than twenty-four inches wide without anyone putting her foot through its bottom, where the wood's thickness measured less than a quarter of an inch.

The lagoon water was murky and smelled faintly of chemicals. Trash lay submerged at the water's edge, caught in the tall reeds that crowded the shore. I tucked my feet into the shoes in front of my seat and smiled at the memory of my dad's birthday gift offer. I shoved my oar into the oarlock and closed the gate. The blade smacked the water. At the coxswain's command, eight hands pressed on the edge of the dock and shoved the boat away.