A short story by Heather Rose

I had been learning to row since I was little. My father would sit me between his legs as he grasped the oars, but of course my arms were too small to help out. And there was nothing I could do about it except grow. But I didn’t grow nearly fast enough. Summers went by, and winters too, and I’d sit in the boat in the shed and grasp the oars and stretch and stretch, but it was no use. When I practiced on the bay I could manage one oar, and then I’d swing the boat about in a circle. Or I ended up half perched above the seat. My father said patience was all it took, like with most things you really wanted.

I just wanted my arms to grow. I would hang from the monkey bars at school all lunch time which annoyed the other kids trying to clamber across. I hung from the door frames at home, climbing up on the kitchen stool and inching my fingers along the dusty ledge. My mother made me get down when she found me. She said it was dangerous and besides it wouldn’t help at all. “That’s not how arms grow, Tabby, by stretching them,” she said.

My father understood all the stretching. He hung two loops down from a tree branch out the front, and he strung a high swing with a wooden bar from another branch. Every afternoon and all weekend I was out there stretching myself. Maybe it was the hanging upside down that caused it, like my mother said, or maybe it was just in the air, but I got tonsillitis that winter. It turned into scarlet fever and I was in bed so long I learned how wonderful it is to feel well. I didn’t go out on the water for a long time, so long spring had come to all the apple trees in the orchard next door before I was up and about again.

And then one morning, my father woke me early and we walked down to the jetty where our little dinghy was floating.

My father was carrying a long length of rope with him. He fastened one end of it to the ring at the back of the boat, and he held the remainder of it coiled in his hands. Then he nodded. I jumped down and checked the oars were snug in their rowlocks. I looked up at him and my father saluted, because once he had fought in a war and he liked to salute still, on special occasions.

Using one hand I pushed off against one of the tyres nailed to the wooden pilons. I adjusted the oars so the blades were square to the water with just the hint of an angle. I let the oars slip away from me, right away, and I took a deep breath. I wasn’t stretching too far. My arms appeared to fit the task. I smelled the morning and observed the calm green water around me and then I pulled. The boat glided away from the jetty. I looked up at my father. He let the rope in his hand trail after me across the water. I pulled again but this time a little harder. The oars were heavy and they were cumbersome but I was used to that bit. I pulled again. And before I knew it

the rope between the dinghy and my father had all but run out and my father was a silhouette on the jetty. I dug in the right oar and came about, heading back towards him.

“Did you see that?” I called.

When my father jumped in and took the rear bench, the boat’s nose rose up a bit,

which made us both laugh. I rowed my father out into the bay.

“I guess everyone learns to row eventually,” I said to him.

“No, they don’t,” he remarked.

“Even if their arms grow long enough?”

“Even then.”

“But why?”

“Some people never even think about learning to row,” my father said. “Don’t even

like boats.”

I looked at my father and the world was a mystery to me. But my father was no mystery, and that was all that seemed to matter back then.

Written for the 2011 Tawe Nunnugah. Heather Rose is the award-winning author of

three novels – White Heart, The Butterfly Man and The River Wife.

View Heather Rose’s Website:
http://www.heatherrose.com.au