Course Correction

by Ginny Gilder

  I had never seen my own mother cry.

  Now Miss Muffet was leaning into me, sobbing.

  “Not my dad!” I said.

  Mom started yelling at me, “He’s gone! Ask him yourself. You’ll see.”

  I tried to square all I knew about my father, everything I had learned, with the new information from Mom. I couldn’t do it. I was so confused. He had left? And with BG, our old mother’s helper? I barely remembered her. Didn’t Dad hire her as his secretary? What was she doing in this conversation? I wanted to shake my head and knock out all the pieces floating around that didn’t fit into my age-old picture of our family.

  No one said anything else. Everybody cried. I suppressed my contrary impulses to defend Dad and give Mom a big hug: she didn’t look like she wanted to hug anyone, but to kill someone.

  It was a few nights after Mom’s explosive announcement before Dad finally showed up to see us kids. He met us in the lobby and didn’t even bother to come upstairs to say hi to Mom. We went out for hamburgers and milk shakes. It was quite a treat midweek, but it felt all wrong.

  Dad didn’t really say anything about anything, just asked about school. None of us kids had the courage to raise the only subject we wanted to talk about. But I couldn’t stand the silence, so I offered to walk him back to his hotel, the Stanhope, on the corner of 81st Street and Fifth Avenue, just him and me. As we crossed Madison Avenue, I took a deep breath, clenched his hand, looked up, and asked, “Dad, won’t you please come home? It’s not the same without you.”

  He stopped, dropped my hand, and looked at me. I looked into his eyes and saw his sadness well up, but when he spoke, he sounded more determined than sad.

  “No, Ginny, I can’t. I don’t think I can ever come home. I don’t love your mother anymore.”

  “Can’t you try?”

  He sighed. Although he started out sounding sad, he ended angry. “No, Ginny, I’m sorry. It’s too late. No more questions. Enough, okay?”

  The sudden edge in his voice warned me not to push further. My instinct to ask, “What about me? Do you still love me?” fought with, “Don’t make him mad. Then he really won’t love you anymore.”

  I walked with him the rest of the way down the street, kissed him goodnight, then turned and ran the two blocks home. My eyes stung—was it the wind or my tears—but pouring my heart out through the pounding of my feet on the sidewalk offered brief relief. Flying up the street, legs stretching to their limit, arms pumping to maintain my momentum, my sprint occupied my full attention, and I stopped noticing how badly I felt.

  3

  At Yale, running and endurance training assumed center stage in my life, no longer an avenue for escape, but a means to a desired end. Never before had I strung together more than three consecutive days of physical activity. I occasionally jogged a couple of miles around my high school campus, attempted basketball, played tennis desultorily in physical education classes, and warmed the bench for my school’s volleyball and softball teams, but the payoff from those efforts didn’t trigger any increased desire or fiery commitment.

  This time, things were different. I should have noticed I was entering the deep and murky waters of insistent passion. But that’s what love does; it blinds us to the full picture, painting only the promise, never the pain.

  Nat scheduled the team’s first timed run at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning in September, but I got off to a slow start. I had slept through my alarm. It was a jolt to open my eyes and see the time. I leaped out of bed, threw on shorts and a T-shirt, laced on my running shoes, and blasted down the stairs and out of the dorm, running full tilt to the gym.

  Great start! Now you’ll never make the team. You’ve handed him just the excuse he needs.

  I arrived huffing and puffing, fifteen minutes late. Nat stood alone on the sidewalk with a clipboard tucked under his arm, a stopwatch cradled in his hand, and a pencil snuggled behind his ear, peeking out from under his ever-present baseball cap. The sidewalk beyond him was empty as far as I could see.

  “You’re late.”

  “Can I run anyway?”

  I was prepared to beg, but he nodded his head up Tower Parkway toward the Grove Street Cemetery. “Do you know the route?”

  “Past the cemetery, left on Prospect, up Science Hill, right on Highland, first right onto St. Ronan, all the way to the end of the street, right on Edwards, left on Prospect, and back to the gym.” I was already breathless.

  “Yep, okay, go on.” He pulled out his clipboard, wrote my name down, and noted the stopwatch reading.

  I set off at a dead run. I couldn’t remember how long the course was, and I didn’t care. I thought nothing of pacing, only of redemption.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid! Recrimination pounded into my head as my feet pounded on the pavement. To the extent a seventeen-year-old couch potato could muster speed, I flew.

  Within the first mile, I arrived at the base of Science Hill—Mount Everest to my novice legs and flabby pulmonary system. No matter. My pride was on the line. I bullied and scolded myself up the hill. Don’t stop. This is your own fault. The goading kept time with my pacing. You have no one to thank but yourself.

  At the top of the hill, I saw a cluster of runners several blocks ahead of me. Perhaps they were fellow crew members. Invigorated by the chance to catch up, I sped up. Within a few painful minutes I reached the group and recognized some of the faces as I drew even. They were plodding with slow deliberation.

  Okay, so you’re not going to be last anymore. Good!

  “Hi, you guys,” I huffed as I stepped into their rhythm. A couple of wheezy “hi’s” greeted me. I didn’t know the team etiquette here, whether to stay with them or speed on ahead, risk making them mad, or go for it and see what I could do.

  It felt as if someone else decided. I didn’t get a chance to protest. I just kept running without slowing down and left my teammates in my wake. I focused on running, not thinking.

  Periodically, I’d see other team members a few blocks ahead of me. Each time, I caught up to them, passed, and maintained my pace.

  I heard increasingly loud and insistent pleas for mercy from various body parts—feet, calves, quadriceps, lungs—that turned into throbbing hot spots and eventually merged into an all-over full-body burn.

  Don’t stop. You’re making progress. See if you can catch that other girl.

  I did not keep track of how many team members I passed, nor did I know the size of the crew that had set out from Payne Whitney on this timed adventure. I had no way to calculate where I was in the pack.

  I didn’t waste any energy on the math. I was no longer dead last; I could have slowed down. I wasn’t going to bring up the rear in a sorry-assed state of humiliation. But somewhere along the way, my goal grew.

  I reached the run’s halfway mark at the back side of the loop that led to the gym and saw a solitary runner several long blocks ahead of me. Come on, move it! You can catch up to that girl. By now, the furious pace I had maintained throughout the run, well above my predictable capacity, was taking its toll. Although I valiantly attempted to ignore the crescendo of my pain, I was no athlete. I knew my body was not up to this competitive challenge that had come out of nowhere. But …

  You can take her. I heard it loud and clear.

  I turned onto Edwards Street. A horribly steep incline greeted me. No time to die; I put my head down and dug in. Of course I slowed, but I didn’t stop, although I was gasping for air, my legs felt like concrete, and the sidewalk ahead wavered as my vision blurred. As I crested the hill, I tripped on an uneven section of sidewalk and staggered a couple of steps, but I recovered. No quitting!

  I ignored the dizziness as I turned the corner to run the downhill section. Keep on going! I didn’t recognize the inner voice that was calling the shots, and I didn’t think to ask. I kicked into an alien gear and started to sprint.

  I chased the girl ahead of me the entire way down Science Hill, about two-thirds of a mile. As we turned onto Grove
Street right outside Woolsey Hall, with about a quarter of a mile to go, I pulled alongside her.

  This girl knew something about responding to a challenge. I could hear her breathing, fast and rough. She glanced at me, but I couldn’t tell if she was wincing or glaring. Ten steps later, it seemed as if she’d sprinted a mile ahead.

  The race was over. The timed run ended less than a minute later, as I crossed the last street and ran all out past Nat, who represented the finish line. He noted the time on his stopwatch and made an entry on his clipboard.

  Stopping abruptly didn’t end my physical pain. For several minutes, I battled competing sensations of nausea, exhaustion, and exhilaration. I wanted to lie down, close my eyes, and let my respiration rate return to normal, but I was standing on a concrete sidewalk in the middle of a city while my insides bucked like an angry horse. Instead, I stepped off to the side, out of the way of incoming runners, breathless, waiting, unsure what came next. I heard Nat tell the fast girl her finish time and ask her if it was a personal best. She nodded yes.

  Then she introduced herself to me. Turns out I had challenged an up-and-coming Olympian. Anne Warner wasn’t going to let some upstart freshman pass her. No fucking way.

  Two members of the Yale Women’s Crew were Olympic aspirants. I had met Chris Ernst, the captain, at my first practice, and Anne Warner the day she kicked my butt at the end of the timed run. They had rowed in the US women’s eight (eight-oared rowing shell) the previous summer, earning a silver medal at the World Championships in Nottingham, England. The following summer, women’s rowing would join the roster of Olympic events for the first time in Montreal. Chris and Anne intended to make the US team and row for gold.

  I hadn’t yet figured out how to drop my oar in the water in sync with the other rowers. I hadn’t taken one hard stroke. But what I felt for rowing was for real: so real that when I discovered that women who were going to the Olympics in less than a year’s time were going to be my teammates, I decided I wanted to make an Olympic team, too. If they could do it, I could do it.

  I was smart enough not to voice my impulsive desire. Even though I knew my instantaneous decision would stick, I also knew anything I said out loud would sound totally ridiculous. Besides, I had no one to tell. I barely knew my teammates. My coach already thought I was a loser. My father would be unimpressed; hell, Mr. Skeptical would tease me out of the room.

  What business did I have getting serious about sports? I knew how my dad would answer that question, and any rational person would agree with him. Starting with my past and ending with my physique, there were reasons aplenty. But I knew rowing and I were made for each other.

  So much so that I could ignore the obvious, my skimpy athletic background, my shrimplike stature, my nonexistent conditioning, minimal strength, and, oh yes, my asthma. I barely registered its existence, as I’d not suffered an attack since I was a high school sophomore, an eternity in teenage years, and I no longer used medication. I was fine. I could do this.

  I didn’t know why rowing held so much allure. It just did. It gave meaning to every day, structured my time, and helped me focus. I didn’t have all afternoon to fritter away after attending my classes: I had to finish my homework so I could hoof it to practice for two to three hours. I didn’t have to talk to connect with other people; I just had to show up and learn. I didn’t embarrass myself academically and maintained my grades, and my heart leaped at the chance to get into a rowing shell every afternoon, rain or shine.

  As the fall progressed and the leaves tumbled onto the surrounding streets, and into the lagoon’s disgusting water, I finally took my first hard strokes. I caught my first crab—losing control of my oar when I was late getting it out of the water—just a split second after everyone else. The blade stuck fast in the water while the boat kept moving forward, and the oar handle punched me in the stomach. It hurt, but not for long.

  I learned to row as the late afternoon sunshine turned to rosy dusk progressively earlier, as autumn moved toward winter. I learned the feel of the boat when we closed our eyes with our oars balanced during the recovery, skimming the water like geese, letting the boat run out. I secretly reveled in the sense of shared purpose that slowly emerged among the girls on the team. There were no cuts that fall, no varsity or junior varsity rankings; everyone who wanted to row was welcome.

  Six weeks into college, I was competing. Nat entered several crews in the Head of the Charles regatta that had sucked me in the previous year in Boston. That day, I had unknowingly witnessed the tenth anniversary of the biggest one-day rowing event in the world, a three-mile race whose course wended its way upstream under six bridges, with four major turns.

  This year, instead of watching starstruck on the shore, I rowed starboard in a women’s eight, a mixed crew of experienced and novice rowers. I wore a Yale Women’s Crew sweatshirt over a simple cotton racing shirt. I felt the chill of the autumn air spike the sunshine as we rowed downriver to the widest part of the Charles, known as “the Basin,” to warm up. I listened to the commands filling the air as dozens of shells organized themselves single file according to bow numbers, and followed my coxswain’s directions as we headed in the long line of string bean boats to the starting line, marked by big yellow buoys. In keeping with the format of a head race, we maintained a distance of several boat lengths behind the crew in front of us as we worked our power up to full pressure about ten strokes in advance of the line.

  The starting official, Ed Singer, greeted us in a deep voice that boomed across the open water: “Yale University, please approach the starting line. Coxswain, bring your crew up to full power. You are crossing the line. Have a good row, ladies.”

  We’re off! I matched my timing with the rower in front of me, but it was hard to contain my excitement and not rush up the slide or yank my oar through the water with giant rip-roaring jerks of glee. The race was going to be long, over fifteen minutes, maybe as long as twenty, and I reminded myself I had to pull hard the entire way.

  Less than a quarter mile into the race, our coxswain pointed us through the first bridge, a double challenge: a combined railroad bridge, with tracks going at one angle, and a roadway bridge at a different angle, each with its own pair of pillars standing different widths apart. Not only did she have to avoid the bridge obstacles, our coxswain had to exit the bridge without crossing the line of buoys that started on the other side of the bridge on the shore side. We came through cleanly, our blades touching nothing but water, and the coxswain set our course just off the starboard buoys as we rowed past Magazine Beach.

  Things got serious right after that because I started to feel winded, which helped calm me down. Can I do this? Although the wind was not a factor, all the boats rowing ahead of us rippled the water’s surface, creating unsettling wakes. When our shell rocked side to side, I had to think about how to adjust my hand height to help steady it. Thank goodness for our coxswain, who reminded the starboards to pull in high and the ports to lower their hands.

  The first big turn approached. The port rowers rowed extra hard to help the coxswain power the boat around the corner that ended at Riverside Boat Club. This steering adjustment put us into the Powerhouse Stretch, a three-quarter mile section of race course devoid of turns. We passed uneventfully through two low, arched bridges with spectators leaning over the sides, snapping photos and cheering loudly.

  The first mile marker bobbed between the bridges, and our coxswain took note. “We’re a third of the way through! Let’s take a power ten for the legs! On this one …” I made sure my next catch dropped in with extra crispness and my legs powered through the stroke in spite of the tiredness that had already crept into the edge of my consciousness.

  As we came through the bridge near the end of the straight stretch, we overtook our first crew, forcing its coxswain to steer away from the buoys and take a wider path along the course. We cruised by them like they were standing still. Seeing the effect of our collective effort was thrilling. I felt reenergize
d. I wanted to pass someone else.

  A giant turn lay ahead, where the river swerved hard to port under the Weeks Footbridge, the race’s halfway point. Our coxswain maneuvered us into perfect position at just the right moment, and the crew we overtook veered into the middle of the river while we took the shortest route. Our boat felt strong as we headed into the second half of the race, but I could feel my legs tiring. I concentrated on keeping time with the rest of my crew.

  We rowed under the Anderson Bridge, near Harvard Square, and caught another crew. Our coxswain warned us as we started to pass, “This is going to be tight on port.” Sure enough, our port blades clashed with their starboard ones as our coxswain fought for the course she wanted, asserting her right as the overtaking crew to choose her line: “Don’t stop! We’re almost by them.” The boat rocked unsteadily as the port rowers struggled to hold on to their oars and keep rowing. My left hand banged on the starboard gunwale. Ow!

  We finished passing and won a clear shot to the start of the next big turn, a full 180-degree, half-mile-long curve to port. The entire starboard side would need to help pull the boat around for a couple of minutes, just as I was starting to flail. I concentrated on pushing my legs down and finishing each stroke. But I couldn’t block out the rising desperation as my muscles cataloged their aches and broadcast repeated requests to ease up, warning of imminent breakdown. I struggled to keep my focus and not to speculate about how much longer I could pull hard.

  One more bridge to get through and one more big turn, and we would be done. As we emerged from under the Eliot Bridge, I heard cheering for Yale. That was for us! I heard, “Go Gilder!” and almost smiled. My first-ever cheerleaders! I hunkered down and kept my eyes on the back in front of me, even though my arms were ready to fall off.

  We rounded the last turn and took our last forty strokes. That minute-plus took forever … but we finally crossed the line. Because the crews in a head race don’t start or end at the same time, determining race results requires time to tally, especially without the benefit of computers. I had no idea how we’d fared against the competition, but I felt like a champion.