River Portraits > Petals on the River

By Dan Kalikow, © 2002 Dan Kalikow, Reprinted with permission.

I was the driver and cheering section for Harvard's North House women's intramural crew in spring 1990. My elder daughter Jodie pulled a strong oar for their "eight." Since the Radcliffe Quad is on the other side of campus from the Charles River, it was hard for all nine young women to reach Weld Boathouse at the same time before breakfast -- so I volunteered to get them down to the boathouse. Several mornings a week, I filled my station-wagon to the brim with healthy young women and drove them down JFK Street towards the Charles.

I would take an "unofficial" parking spot beside the Weld Boathouse and watch the crew troop past the old single sculls I had rowed in the '60s, and take out the oars emblazoned with the blue-and-white North House crest. They each grasped an oarlock and then under their coxswain's command, raised and toted their eight-seater shell straight out the boathouse door and maneuvered it down the wide ramp, then arched it over their heads and into the dark predawn waters.

They would head upriver, under the Anderson Bridge, but would soon re-emerge at smooth speed, headed for the Weeks Footbridge and the wider Basin downstream. Sometimes I took photos as they crossed in front of the B-School, or from the other side with the Eliot or Lowell House spires as background. Often I followed them downriver to watch them sprinting between the B.U. and Harvard bridges, but just as often I would sit and watch the sunrise on the banks of the river. Then back they would row, stow their gear, and I would get them to their morning classes on time.

Over the weeks as the dawn advanced and spring warmed, so did the morning conversations of Jodie and her crew-mates. The big intramural race was approaching! Their long weeks of training would soon be put to the test. That was one May morning that I was SURE to be on time, and with coffee and donuts aplenty.

This time, as they stroked away in synchrony, I was off like a shot downriver, to park near the finish line at the BU Bridge. I met some other folks, also toting binoculars, who turned out to be either other parents or Masters of competing houses. The flotilla of eights was lining up behind the Harvard bridge — so far away. The early-morning fog cleared, revealing the promise of a lovely day: bright sun, blue skies and calm water. We couldn't hear the starter's pistol, but soon we spied the straining backs of our scholar-athlete-daughters struggling for coordinated speed.

They gathered momentum, clustering within a boatlength -- but then they separated . . . and North House's blue-and-whites had the lead! Then Dunster by a prow, then Adams too . . .

To a chorus of cheers from the riverbank, which certainly must have been inaudible to the combatants over their own wave-chop and coxswain-call, Jodie and her crewmates soldiered upriver! I could see the strain on their faces as they threw the last reserves of their youthful sinew and strong will into the fight. They put on a magnificent final spurt, edging out Dunster at the line but falling second to an even faster-closing Eliot.

Spent, they slumped on their oars and joined the other crews in acknowledgment of the victors. All of them waved to their admirers onshore -- while, to be sure, keeping the other hand on an oar! Then they gathered their remaining energies for the leisurely, curving return beneath our beautiful bridges.

By then, the routine was well-established: If I had been watching at the basin, I would be waiting at Weld afterwards. But today was different; it marked the end of the intramural season. I was never again to revel in their joyous health and team spirit. I knew them all, they were all friends, and Jodie was among them

I had to mark the occasion somehow . . . and the Charles had to be part of it, since it was here, on this public stage, that these young heroes had battled so valiantly. Instead of just going back upriver to the boathouse, I stopped at the River Street Bridge, at Mahoney's Flower Shop. After a quick purchase there, I rushed out to the middle of the span, just in time to see the first eight round the bend at Magazine Beach, heading towards the bridge.

The Winthrop and Lowell shells were first, which was fine with me -- I was waiting for North. Waving and cheering, I made sure they were aware that I was up there . . . and then as they approached, I gave them honor -- strewing the water, their shell, and the crew with dozens and dozens of roses. When they all emerged on the other side, each woman had collected a bouquet.

Somewhere in my family album, there is a picture of the sunlit dock of Weld Boathouse, showing me with my arm around Jodie, surrounded by her crew, everyone smiling and holding roses. Perhaps there are similar photos or pressed flowers in scattered scrapbooks as they've dispersed to the four corners of the globe . . . and all the flowers bear some trace of the river waters.

Through the years, my family and I have communed with the Charles many a time; my future wife and I strolled its banks in the '60s; we brought our young girls to countless Cambridge Riverfront Festivals in the '70s and '80s; and we enjoyed the river again at their two Harvard Commencements in '90 and '93. But that magic morning of rose-petals on the Charles remains my deepest communion with the river.