Shouldering

            One day it happened, and I felt what they had been saying all season long--that it wasn't the paddle I was moving. The paddle was merely an extension of my arms, attached through my shoulders, spiraling through my twisted spine, into my abdominals, coursing down my thighs, to my feet, where it all began.

            "Ground yourself starting from the middle of your soles," Coach had told me on the first day of long distance season while the other women held the canoe stationary in the water. "Anchor your paddle as your torso twists as much as possible, then pull your body towards it as you sit up straight."

            Before that, I'm not sure what I'd been doing, other than trying to self-diagnose the sharp pain in my left shoulder, using every remedy I could think of--heat, ice, massage, pressure point release with a lacrosse ball, foam rolling, Ibuprophrin, Icy Hot, yoga therapy, and more. Was it bursitis? Tendonitis? A torn rotator cuff? Had I strained it? Maimed it? Would it ever work right again? I even went to a practitioner who suggested that it was connected to the broken collar bone I experienced out of the birth canal which was echoing almost forty years past its origin.

            Sometimes people say things in ways which finally make sense. Different muscles were fatigued after that first day of understanding. And rather than feeling as if my left shoulder was on the verge of snapping off--that fragile wing, worn and frail from overuse--instead my lower back and buttocks, my legs and feet, and most importantly, my core, burned.

            It was how I knew that paddling every day rather than the three which regatta season required, could be possible. It became, organically, I think from that first sprinting season, those practices which began at the same evening hour but ended after sunset, my muscles acclimating to work well past my expectations of them.

            My daily ritual: a quiet bike ride down the path to the beach access where I chained up against the link fence, packed my slippers into my basket, and walked barefooted with my paddle in hand to the place where Coach stood waiting for us to gather.

            "Good morning," Coach greeted me each afternoon, beaming a smile. He wore socks with slippers on the sand and sometimes disposable booties, like the ones you put over your shoes when you're entering a hospital's germ-free zone. He'd lean to one side standing or walking, trying to hide his slight limp. Often he'd comb his fingers through his thin hair and raise his chin with his eyes still slightly cast down--the move of a humble man who needn't be so humble.

            Coach had crossed the channel so many times, more years than many of the crew had lived. He had led the twice-winning Foti's, then quit as their leader because "practicing every day interfered with their lives. But it was necessary to win." After their first, they believed they could win without the daily grind, and Coach had walked. "'Do it your own way,' I told em. 'See what happens.'" They asked him back the following year, and first place was theirs again.

            Later, he would tell me about his ex wife and how she had cheated on him after thirty years of marriage, how he never married again because his children were grown. "Somebody had to pay for private school and give her the ability to not work. But she got lonely." The sacrifices he made for paddling, for the canoe club, likely some part of that equation.

            I wanted to tell him my story, how I had been cheated on, too, but I just listened, old Hawaiian music coming softly from the radio as his white pickup creaked, bouncing down the highway. He had been at the park and offered to give me a ride to the rigging in Hawaii Kai, even though the crew was supposed to meet at the launching point. It was the day before E Lau Hoe, the race from Hawaii Kai to Nanakuli--26 miles I was secretly dedicating to my deceased father, who ran about the same amount of marathons as Coach had raced the channel.

            They were the same in some ways, my dad and him. Every afternoon, my dad would come home from work and don his running shoes to leave for an hour or two or three, depending on his training schedule and how close we were to the Honolulu Marathon. Afterward he'd come home, shirtless, and my mother would call him to the table to eat. Every night, she'd tell him to put on a shirt. And every night, they'd go for a short walk after dinner, then he'd sneak off to his home office and spend the rest of the night working.

            This is not an exaggeration--my father did not plan time with me. He ran a program he called "Low Kids Are Tough" with my brother and sister, but it had gone bust by the time I was old enough to participate. He was very busy, a workaholic before the term existed, and eventually paid for my entire college education at a private school on the mainland by writing a personal check.

            But growing up, a lot of people would greet me with, "I saw your dad running," and I would feel jealous. It was as if that person had somehow gotten time I wanted with him, even though his was a solitary act. They saw him in a way I didn't: at peace, more at home on the road than he seemed, well, at home.

            When I finally got the time I wanted with him, I was twenty-nine and working in the same office. He had cancer and needed someone to drive him to and from appointments, pick up his macrobiotic lunches, and pretend to know how to close real estate deals. As his glorified secretary, we spent lots of time talking about business and life and family. Our last words:

            "You know I love you, right?"

            "Yes," he'd said, a bit surprised.

            "I love you, too."

            And then I was on a plane to spend the holidays with my in-laws, and I think we both knew he'd be gone before we'd get another chance. A few days later, he finished his final marathon.

            Then I was on a red-eye back via Minnesota in a Motel 6 because my flight had missed its connection. There, I heard he'd passed, the message to call home waiting for me even though I hadn't yet told anyone about the delay.

            That day before E Lau Hoe I'd shown up on my bicycle, had chained it to the normal place, and walked over to Coach's truck.

            "Howcome you stay here?" he asked me, grinning.

            "Cause I didn't listen to my husband, who said I should drive to Hawaii Kai." The truth is I wasn't planning on attending the rigging. The truth is I had almost quit paddling about a million times. There were so many reasons, changing all the time. It was hard on my body, hard on my family, and hard on my mental state. But I tell you this: I never missed a practice, never missed a rigging.

            So Coach leaned out the window of his white truck. "Get in, if you like one ride. You can walk back," he laughed. I smiled. "Nah, just kidding."

            Molokai Hoe was only three weeks away, and E Lau Hoe was meant to prepare us, as Dad Center from Kailua Bay to Waikiki, had a couple of weeks before. I can tell you this about what it feels like to finish a long-distance race: it feels like floating.

            And even though you're not thinking about much of anything because you're concentrating on keeping time with the paddlers in front of you, on your form, and on your breathing. Or you're imagining the worst of the large swells on one side and the sharp sea cliff on the other. You're trying everything not to huli into the chasm of blue, toward the indiscernible bottom because that would mean swimming. It would mean righting the boat by balancing your wrinkly feet on the six-inch undersides of the iakos and pulling the ama overhead carefully because making contact as it crashes back into the water would mean a coma. You worry about wasting paddling energy on then bailing water from the canoe with bottomed out Clorox containers, and you fear the surf will pour into the boat's belly because though the thing shouldn't sink, it certainly won't float enough to sail until it's mostly dry inside. These are the thoughts which fill your mind and not your husband or your job or your kids. And your brain is exhausted at the end.

            It's as exhausted as your body, which has leapt willingly away from the safety of the canoe into that chasm where you tread for long moments until the escort boat picks you up. There, you spend your twenty-minute break downing carb-filled water and Cliff power shots, donning a rain jacket even though it's not raining because although the sun is blaring, your body is still freezing. That break never lasts long enough because you're back in the water too soon, splashing, so the steers-woman can see where you are despite the waves which launch the tip of the boat into the air, then plunge down the bump as it speeds toward you. Your job is to hook onto the canoe before it flies past, hauling your body out from the heavy stuff and popping your behind into the freshly-vacant seat like you've done too many times already. Your job is to handle the paddle, stabbing it well past the ocean's skin at the perfect angle so that you catch enough water to keep the boat moving.

            Distance paddling showed me something about myself--about my physicality--that I never believed possible. And though I had found it true in work and in writing, my body had never been tried to that extent. That I could persevere and focus to complete a challenging mission, that all I had to do was decide, simple as that, despite the pain and fatigue, despite the thirst and hunger: those were my lessons. In fact, I was never as hungry as after a race, but that hunger never entered my mind while I was racing. And my body, the thing I had critiqued (and never constructively) had pulled me through the finish line, floating. On the verge of collapse, I floated nonetheless.

            But although I did race E Lau Hoe, I must admit that I did not go to Molokai, did not voyage from there to Waikiki with the rest of my crew, even though that was the goal, the whole point, of distance season. I was not laden with lei at the end, I did not share the second place metal my crew won, nor did I drink from their winning cup. And it wasn't because my shoulder got the best of me, or the hubs didn't support me, or because my step-kids didn't want me to race.

            After the last day of practice, I got a call.

            "You wen quit?" the voice asked.

            "No," I said.

            "Someone said you wen quit," Coach said. "Dose girls--nothing to do but talk."

            "You said there wouldn't be a third crew, though, so I cancelled our travel plans." The kids and the hubs were all looking forward to spending the weekend on the small island, but it was a logical conclusion--we weren't going to travel all the way to Molokai to not race.

            "But I never called crew," he said.

            "Are you telling me I made second crew?" The likelihood of this never crossed my mind. I had only ever been in third crew, and it seemed there were so many others who would earn a seat before me. There was no way that out of the forty women who began the season, I would be one of the top twenty. No way, no how. Especially because this was my first season as a paddler. I was just beginning to understand what it all meant.

            The silence ebbed with meaning.

            "And, I mean, I can't re-book because it's so much drama for the kids, and it's my step-son's birthday, and we already made other plans, and I...."          

            Coach was on the other end of the line, but he didn't say anything until I was finished. "You gotta do what's best fo' your family," he said.

            "Yes," I said.

            "You gotta do what's best fo' dem."