Anyone who has seen me in late spring and early fall will have noticed the band-aids on my hands. I am a rower and, whenever the weather changes or when workouts are surprisingly long or damp, I get blisters on my hands.
The sport is beautiful and painful at the same time, a solo experience with a boat of other people, and the elusive goal of finding the perfect “swing” with each successive stroke.
But it’s not the beauty of the sport that matters most to me; it’s the other rowers. Earlier this month, I raced in the Head of the Charles with teammates from Community Rowing. I currently have 35 teammates, who range in age from 24 to 75. They live all over Boston, and they are in every stage of life one can imagine. There are cancer survivors, grandmothers, newly-engaged women, and recent college graduates, nurses, academics, tech start-up workers, a therapist, a graphic designer, music and math teachers, an environmentalist, a lawyer, a health analyst. Some are gourmet cooks, some are bakers, and some bring drinks to our potlucks.
I get up three mornings a week—hours that most everyone else is asleep—to row on the Charles with these amazing people. We are fastidious with our equipment; we move huge boats off high racks with lifts, we carry oars in clumps of eight, and we know that P always has the proper tools, and A always knows how to adjust the footplate. I say something absent-minded and T makes fun of me. C has the tiaras and hats for the birthday girls, and the mardi gras beads for the rest of us. We row in the dark and watch the sunrise, while the great blue herons and the black-crowned night herons watch from their posts on the banks of the river. We go inside in the winter and do it all on rowing machines together. We travel in the summer and fall to races around the country, and sometimes we bring home medals. But mostly, and above all, we are together with one another, sharing the challenges of this deeply demanding physical sport, as well as the challenges of life and of growing up and growing old together. Those of us who have had children advise E about her pregnancy and buy her children’s books and swaddling cloths. J always makes reservations for us to travel to New Hampshire in January for a weekend of winter hiking and laughter and birthday cake. C rallies everyone for another morning of running stadiums at Harvard, and E lobbies to go to the bagel place after that. We carpool together and go to each other’s weddings and, when the time comes, we mourn our past teammates with a memorial row and a moment of reflection.
Though rowing is deeply personal to me (my very first Head of the Charles was in 1978), my description only scratches the surface of this incredible group of people and the community that they have created. The gift of being with them—all of them—is what communities like Beaver offer each individual member as well. We are adults and students together in one building, sharing the most joyful and the most challenging moments that humans can experience. When they graduate, our alumni go on to all those other moments of life—jobs, living situations, partners and families, friends and adventures, loss and struggle, success and celebration.
Because of my job, and also because of my rowing team, I spend a lot of time thinking about communities—what they are, how they form, how they are sustained, what it feels like to belong, what they are capable of. Schools have infinite opportunities to create and build community because they are composed of so many smaller communities. Each class, team, club, and group is its own community and most adolescents are joiners. Doing things you love with others brings you close, and you develop your own rituals, jokes, and traditions, your own ways of signaling to one another that you care and that they matter to you.
At Beaver recently, we have also focused on being one connected school community through a variety of means: more and better retreats, navy-gray teams and competitions, an all-school First Assembly as well as seasonal festivities like Harvestfest and Dam Jam, shared Middle and Upper School spirit days and instrumental concerts, two-division athletic leadership through SALT, increased time together for Middle and Upper School faculty and staff, better communication with families, more neighborhood outreach and connection, and increased volunteer opportunities for parents and caregivers. We have talked more about our history and our values and shared our vision for the school. This is a partial list, of course. Each day is filled with affirmations of who we are and what matters to us, shared with people around us whom we love and respect, and with whom we learn and struggle and grow. I cannot think of anything more important we might do with this life than uplift those around us, improve this world we inhabit, and share in the inexpressible joy that we are afforded as humans.
It doesn’t have to be on a river at dawn, but everyone needs and deserves a team with shared values working together and loving each other over lifetimes of change and growth.