Let's Stay Together

Working with eleven other people, I am carrying a 225 pound boat over my head, over a dock that runs into a patio that has been turned into a swanky party.

Cool black musicians sing, “Let’s stay together” and I almost begin to laugh. Our tiny coach, who has this amazing Eastern European accent combined with an American smile, yells “Way enough!” which oddly means to stop. She barks out other commands that I can neither hear nor understand.

We back up the boat, over the top of an empty table and close to the band that is here every Thursday night. I realize then, as I look at the swanky people with their cocktails that the band is not the entertainment, but rather we are the entertainment. The maneuvers are tricky and if we do not stay together we will drop the boat, a delicate object with a fragile skin.

And so begins my lessons in rowing. I have not been on the water yet; I hope that happens next week. But I can tell you from the videos that this is more complex than I imagined. Not that the concept is complex; you get into a boat that is so long and skinny, it’s virtually useless to do anything but go one direction, backwards that is. But the complexity is in the team work. Just picking up the boat and maneuvering it through the boathouse would have impressed the pickiest of all high school band leaders.

This is nothing like the team sports I have ever been involved in. There is no unique positions, no tolerable deviances from the norm. We are all here to row, in the exact same fashion, with the same strength, with the same cadence. No matter how big, small, strong, weak, or different. Exactly the same. I think of it like being on a tandem bike but with seven other people.
And while carrying the boat is certainly the most complicated component of getting ready to row, learning to carry the oars down to the dock is not a simple task either. I felt like an ant trying to carry large chopsticks with weird blades on the end. They are not particularly heavy, thank goodness because in the event of a water landing they are THE floatation devices, but they remind me of trying to move furniture. I am always on the verge of dinging into something or someone.

Now back to the dock, and the singing; I try to follow what the others are doing to help our boat along. Teamwork is what it’s all about and I know I better grab my 25 pounds or someone else will be carrying 50. We rotate the boat a few more times into different awkward positions and then manage to get it back into the boat house, sliding it carefully on the racks with cushioned grippers to keep it steady.

The night is almost here and I walk back towards the dock. I can see out on the water a team of four men, stroking perfectly down the river. It all looks so easy, so beautiful. They are sitting just on top of the water and they glide down the river. “Together, let’s stay together” is all I can think. And I am sure next week, when I am the one out on the river, that I will look nothing like them. I laugh thinking of our boat with 8 people, oars going in every direction. I will only hope I don’t end up in the water.

By Linda English