rowboat

the sweetie wants a boat. i've spent the last ten years or so trying to navigate a rather insistent form of vertigo while standing on solid ground, so when the sweetie began his mutterings about a boat to take out on the reservoir, a boat for fishing, boat that floats on water, i didn't say much. i figured a boat we could afford wouldn't be a boat that would float. i nodded some, we sure do need a boat. yessiree. but i didn't take it very seriously.

the sweetie, on the other hand, takes things like this very seriously. he spent countless hours poring over images of motorless boats, figuring out distance, size, weight and all that might snag him up in his quest to float quietly on a lake surrounded by mountains in his own little boat, fishing and fishing and fishing. finally, he found it. there were phone calls. there were emails. there were visits with a truck rental place. there were consultations with googlemaps. there was a great setting of alarms for an early, early hour. we left the house at 5am in a rented van for a 7:30 meeting in a farm field scattered with boats. the boat man led us over to "ours" and my heart sank. i understood godawful and i understood grotesque.

but the sweetie did not understand any of these words. he was already in love. the boat man said things like, "it used to be a sailboat so it has a retractable keel," and "when i came out the other day there was a little water in it so i imagine there's a pinhole leak somewhere." and those should have been red flags. not for the sweetie. he cannot be blamed for any of this because he was already so smitten and already rowing that boat across the lake in his mind. but i should have known. the boat was painted amateur camo. so it is my fault it came off that rickety trailer and the sweetie and the boat man huffed and groaned as they shoved it in the back of the rented van. this, too, should have been a clue. it is a 200 pound boat, a boat heavy for my sweetie and another grown man. a boat that will require horribleness each time we wrangle it into the water.

we drove straight to the d.e.c. office near the reservoir where the folks there will steam clean the boat for you, to keep you from bringing invasive creatures into the water supply. the men standing around laughed about the weight of the boat, which allowed little bits of dawning, of realization. they know i can't lift the boat. so i did. with the sweetie on one end, i grabbed my end and we hauled the boat over to the rented van, where rational thought and the voices of all my tiny muscles screaming in unison brought me to the conclusion the men had. and they came over and helped the sweetie lift the thing up and on into the van. cleaned, stenciled and paperworked, we headed right on over to a spot on the reservoir where we could unload the boat and keep it. the shore is littered with adorable little rowboats, bottom up, chained to trees or chunks of cement. they recoiled in horror as we unloaded our frankenboat.

our trip from the van down a short gravel incline to the water was full of bad words and dropped boat ends. you will remember here the 200 pounds of awkward metal. i hated the boat. the whole idea was ridiculous. we are not boat owners. we are not rowers of oars. i sat in the middle plank seat of this fourteen foot camo behemoth and fitted the aqua blue oars into the little holes for them. i do not know about rowing. i have canoed and i'll tell you right now the two are not much alike. the sweetie hopped in, threw in fishing pole, tackle box and anchor. the sweetie has such great faith that all will work out the way he hopes. i am not at all like the sweetie. i sat in my blue life vest and grabbed the oars. i paddled like i was in a canoe and we went backward. it took me a few minutes to figure it out, but we started moving forward, in a pretty straight line, with something like decent speed.

there was wind and the water was choppier than you think it will be on a sunny day. we spun around a bit and found out that a 100 foot anchor doesn't do much in a large part of the reservoir. the sweetie did some fishing. water sloshed around his feet. after about fifteen minutes, we headed for shore, drained the boat and went back out. fifteen minutes was about the limit for staying out and afloat. this is when we found out that it's true. any boat we can afford can't stay afloat long. when the sweetie offered to row, i snarled, "stick with fishing!" now, you already know i am not good at rowing. i have no special skill and someone someday will tell me all the things that are wrong with my technique. but i like it. i like it the way i like knitting. it hits the same place in my brain, pushes the button that says calm down. everything is just as it should be. and i sat in the boat thinking i wouldn't mind rowing around all day.

it will always be an ugly boat. it will always weigh 200 pounds. but the nineteen tiny holes in it are patched up and the wheels the sweetie fastened onto the back make land travel a bit easier. and after three days, my back still doesn't hurt from rowing and my arms and shoulders feel fine, too. all those parts of me feel better, maybe. but what i'm still trying to work into reality, the part that isn't fitting anywhere at all, is that, during these three days, i noticed my brain doesn't track motion funny on the boat. no vertigo. no dizziness, no sweeping movements of land and sea and sky away from me as i fall endlessly toward them. the one place where my brain doesn't lie to me about where we are is when we're on the boat.