My sister and I went rowing on the lake every day of every summer of our childhood. I did the rowing while she sat in the stern posing like a princess. Rowboats are funny like that. Only one person can row. And since I was the older brother and the “man” of the family, this duty fell to me, but I enjoyed it. Our father had died of leukemia when I was nine and Sarah was only seven. I missed him more than I realized at the time, and I took my new role seriously and willingly. I was happy to assume the position of man of the family and to row my sister Sarah around the lake all day long.

            Our family’s rowboat was wooden and painted red – that shade of red you used to see on barns and country houses back then. It’s got a little maroon in it and some brown, but mostly it’s red. To this day when I see that color on a tee shirt or an old boat, my mind floats back to those lazy, innocent times that will always be my favorite memories. Back in the 1960s things were painted once when they were new and never again. Paint just faded and chipped off after a while and that was okay. The oars had never been painted so they were always that aged grey color that wood turns when it’s constantly exposed to the elements. The oarlocks were oxidized stainless steel and the holes where they sat were worn wide from use. They made a clop, clonk sound as I rowed. Whenever I think back to those summers in upstate New York, I can still hear the rhythm of those oarlocks echoing across the empty lake in the morning, the sound of adventure ahead.

            I got a kick out of watching Sarah’s imagination at work in the boat: she’d pretend to adjust her tiara and smooth out her regal robe, her imaginary silk skirts that spread out and covered her half of our craft. I told her the story of Cleopatra I’d learned about in school and she loved to pretend she was seated on a gilded barge as it floated down the Nile, its banks lined with worshipful subjects hoping for a glimpse of their queen. She once made me a knight, tapping me on each shoulder with a wet tree branch. But Her Royal Highness’s favorite sport, and mine too, was investigating the lake’s miles of shaded, mossy banks. We never tired of checking out the beetles, the darting schools of fish, and the perpetually green, damp, otherworldly growths under the natural awnings created by the biggest trees along the shore. Sometimes I stopped rowing and we just drifted around in the middle of the lake, lying back with our eyes closed, the sun’s warmth soothing our faces. The silence was pure. Barely noticeable breezes caressed our skin as we listened to the orioles and warblers and traced our fingers along the surface of the lake while our rowboat drifted.

            We both loved being united together and apart from everyone else, adding a layer of uniqueness to everything we did together. It made us feel special and we knew it. But Sarah went one step further. Before she was ten she had instinctively developed the ability to experience deep joy. When she was laid out, face up, in the back of our little boat, her face glowed with the contentment of a nun at a baptism. She worshipped the sun. She called it the source of all nature, as she explained to me the summer she suddenly acquired the ability to speak like an intellectual, “without which there would be no lake, no trees, no Nile, and no gold to be fashioned into my royal crown.”

            Dad had taught me how to fish when I was five. Sarah was still a toddler, but the summer she turned eight she informed me that she wanted to learn, so I rowed us to dad’s special corner of the lake. As the man of the house, I recounted to my little sister my father’s informative lecture about this section of the lake, where the water was supposed to be deepest and the fish were rumored to grow uncommonly large.

            In the middle of my lecture on the finer points of bait, a wriggling worm startled Sarah and she stumbled backwards out of the boat. She hadn’t learned to swim yet and she panicked. I jumped in and used my YMCA training to drag her to the bank, which was closer than the boat, because her fall and my dive had propelled it quite a way out into the lake. After I planted her on dry land, I swam back out to the boat, found the oar that had fallen in the water, and rowed back to Sarah. She was more scared than hurt, but her embarrassment fueled her determination to conquer worms and water. Within a week she had taught herself to swim like a dolphin, and to this day Sarah’s the only girl I’ve ever known who could spear a baitworm onto a fish hook without qualms. Her plethora of childhood achievements included such diverse feats as the family distance record for skipping stones across the water as well as the invention of peanut butter and licorice sandwiches.

            Anchored about fifty yards out from our dock was an old, wooden swim float that had been built and moored long before our family started spending summers at the lake. Its ladder had two rungs missing and a couple of planks on the top had disappeared as well. We didn’t know any better and didn’t care. For all we knew, all lake platforms had blank spaces and broken rungs. I was really glad Sarah learned to swim, because when it got really hot, we swam out to the float and played there for hours; jumping, diving, and playing tag or king of the hill. Sometimes we raced back to shore. Even though she was younger and a girl, she beat me every time, except when I insisted we swim backstroke and she got water up her nose. One summer I found a garden snake and couldn’t resist hiding it in her bed. Sarah knew darn well they were harmless, but she pretended to be all scared and mad at me just so she could get mother to give her extra Graham crackers. She made up a rule that if I publicly apologized to her, she would share the Grahams with me. When we weren’t in the boat, we invented games, told each other scary stories, and giggled until we could hardly breathe.

            Ever since dad went to heaven (so we were told), leaving us semi-orphans, Mother’s mantra had become, “I don’t know what I’d do without you kids.” We did our best to make mother proud and show her how much we appreciated her taking care of us. Even though we were little, our young hearts sensed how difficult it was for mom after dad died. When I think of it now in retrospect, it must have devastated her, especially considering those were the days when couples made lifetime commitments and the death of a spouse had the effect of a nuclear bomb. Her life had been altered forever and we were aware that we had become her only source of what little joy she felt. So we made our beds and did our chores every morning, earning our right to play and explore the rest of the day. Mother loved making us her famous luncheon meat sandwiches with American cheese and Gulden’s mustard. She also let us scarf down all the walnuts and seedless grapes we could stomach. To this day, Waldorf salads evoke that same brand of nostalgia that faded red boats do. She wrapped our splendid lunches in wax paper and waved as we marched down to the dock. It wasn’t long before we knew by heart every inlet, every rock and overhanging branch on the lake. Most of our neighbors waved when we rowed past their docks, but a few of the year-round folks didn’t really cotton to us summer people and pretended not to see us when we rowed by. They would suddenly refill their lemonades or hike up the intensity of their badminton games when they saw us cruising by.  

            I’ll never forget the summer evening my little sister stood towering over me. I had fainted from the heat and mom’s attempt at a special treat—spinach salad with bay shrimp. The first thing my eyes saw when I came to was Sarah’s face, holding simultaneous looks of empathy and fear, neither of which was going to save her big brother from his first allergy attack. I had eaten bushels of shrimp every summer without so much as a hiccup. Now I had been turned into a swollen, itchy, dizzy mess who fainted from eating a few forkfuls of shellfish. The anti-inflammatories helped, but Sarah’s hovering over me and holding my hand did more for my recovery than any medicine. I was in no hurry to get well so I could prolong the special attention from my two ladies. Sarah sat indoors with me and read me stories while mom continually replenished the walnuts and Graham crackers.

            We hated going back to the city, back to school in September. One Labor Day weekend Sarah and I marched into the kitchen together, a bold, miniature phalanx, and petitioned mother to let us stay at the lake all year long.

            “But my darlings, the lake is frozen over all winter and the cabin and the roadways are covered with snow three times taller than both of you.”

            We frowned and insisted, “Mo-om.”

            “And,” she added, “the only source of heat in this cabin is the wood-burning stove.”

            That clinched it. We weren’t afraid of twelve feet of snow but we knew we were too young to chop a whole winter’s worth of wood. Besides, who would make the sandwiches? That’s a lot to think about and we figured it out simultaneously. Our eyes met and we turned and walked away, holding each other’s hands, bravely accepting our fate of yet another suburban winter.

            During those famously irrational years of puberty and adolescence, Sarah started doing more and more things alone. She spent hours at the library. She took art classes after school. She was never home. When she did manage to join mom and me for dinner, we had great conversations and I felt like she was still the girl I had grown up with. But when dinner was over, she went back to being the new Sarah with the new body and the capricious temperament. She swore she still loved me like a brother, but she was developing strong interests elsewhere. She no longer went to Yankee games with me. I took my best shot and invited her to see the van Gogh exhibit at the Met, but she had already been there with one of her pot-smoking, bearded friends from Greenwich Village. When she was home, she spent all her time upstairs painting and drawing and talking on the phone. My biggest disappointment was Sarah announcing on the last day of school that she didn’t want to go to the cabin on the lake for the summer. I looked at mom for support, but she just shrugged and made that “what can I do?” look with her face. I couldn’t imagine going up there alone, so I busied myself taking care of the house while mom worked part time at a local real estate place. Sarah was always taking the train into the city, often staying overnight, going to art openings and parties with her many boyfriends. My idea of a fun evening was cooking dinner at home for mom and me.

            When the time came, I wasn’t motivated to apply to colleges.  Sarah overheard me talking to mother and insisted it was time for me to do something for myself. She reminded me that she’d be leaving home in a year anyway, on account of having skipped ninth grade. I couldn’t argue with her. She knew better than I did what was best for me. I wanted to go to Columbia or NYU, but she insisted I pick a school far away. We compromised on the University of Chicago.It turned out to be a great school in a great city, but the curriculum never captured my interest and I couldn’t concentrate. I stayed sane by channeling my frustrated energy from homesickness into rowing. The university had just initiated a rowing team, so the muscles and technique I developed on the lake earned me a spot on the double scull crew. I never declared a major, but I did pledge a fraternity. I liked most of the guys and the sense of belonging, but every weekend they threw rollicking keg parties and transformed these future Nobelists and captains of industry into screaming, gyrating, barfing idiots. I like a good party, but when push comes to shove, I’m more of a rowboat kind of guy. I often locked myself in my room, put on my headphones and wrote letters to Sarah. After a year and a half of C+ boredom, I finally gave up and returned to Putnam County.

                        
             

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