Tri-State WeCanRow
by Kathleen Gavin

With anxious anticipation for the return of light and the warmth of spring, I am counting the days until ice-out. My coach sent word that this comes, most hopefully, about the first week of April for Twin Lakes in Connecticut's Northwest Corner. We will be meeting soon on what we have come to know as this "soulful lake"—the team, our coaches, a coxswain, our launch driver and friends. We'll get ready to lift a long, heavy fiberglass boat for our sixth season on the water. As always, we will look to welcome new members, knowing their arrival might be hesitant, saddened, uncertain at best. Those were feelings many of us carried as we walked onto the dock for our first time too. When I arrived, then 48 years of age, I had lost a breast and took on a rower's heart. This story is about my crew, Tri-State WeCanRow. As rowers, we received our tickets onto the boat through common experience. We are all surviving cancer. Yet in that hard-to-define-way in which paradox works, each one of us feels it is a great fortune to be a part of this team.

In 2002, the Boston-based Row as One Institute began its pilot program called WeCanRow, which stands for "WomenEnduringCancer Row." Row as One develops and inspires self-confidence and achievement for individuals by focusing on the connections between mental, physical and emotional strength. WeCanRow became a collaborative project with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a wellness and rehabilitation initiative for women with breast cancer.

WeCanRow begins where surgery and physical therapy leave off, creating a new opportunity for cancer survivors to heal. Through a grant from the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) and in collaboration with Row as One, a local chapter of WeCanRow was started in 2004 by our team's leader, Noreen Driscoll-Breslauer. The program's intent is to benefit men and women in the Tri-State (CT-NY-MA) area. Survivors of different cancers at different stages of recovery gather weekly on beautiful Twin Lakes in Salisbury, Connecticut. WeCanRow receives support from the local community. We operate under the fiscal auspices of the non-profit Health Care Auxiliary of the Tri-State Region. Through the generosity of the Salisbury School, we have the use of a boat and facilities on the lake during rowing season from April to October, as well as use of the School's Erg Room (ergometers are indoor rowing machines for training during the off season).

Our team will meet excitedly on that early April afternoon. It will be our chance to commune again with the sun, the changing skies, and the lovely Litchfield Hills surrounding this placid lake. Those hills will bear witness to another year of our united effort to row and become stronger. We will hope for the undulating, synchronistic feel of eight oars moving through water. We'll be pretty rusty with the rowing lingo—"ratio," "body angle," "leg drive." The boat will rock from side to side until we can find our balance with the oars again. The cry "we are down at port!" will sound familiar, then all the sessions of rowing before this one will begin to flood back into our collective body memory. Some of us have been at it awhile (although one of the most important lessons is that every rower can always become a better one). We're a good rowing team if you calculate sheer spirit for strength. We work at rowing as hard as each of us can, yet we aren't here to win competitions. After cancer treatment, our greatest competition occurs within the maddening games our own minds set up as they seek answers to questions none of us can ever fully answer: "Am I well now? Is it over? If it is over, then for how long? What if the cancer comes back this year? Or next? Does that mean I will die soon? "

Rowing brings a blessed relief from this kind of mental volleyball. We drive down a long, forested road to reach the lake and my happy anticipation builds on every ride, the way it did before I reached my grandparent's house as a child. Rowing gives us the opportunity to push off the dock and leave our life's litany behind, if only for a few hours each week. With our oars locked down and our shoes strapped in, we get centered on the sliding seats. "Count off from bow when ready," calls the coxswain. Each rower replies by number. Then carefully, cautiously, like moving a massive piece of fine porcelain china, we slide the 60-foot boat along the length of the dock. An osprey, a heron or an eagle may fly overhead, and the water's reflection will be our reminder that indeed, here we are again.

I first stepped into this boat after the wild ride that is cancer treatment—surgery, chemo, more surgery, radiation. I'll always recall the pull of gravity as I heard the Doctor's words, "This is invasive breast cancer. It is very serious. It has spread." The moment felt akin to being handed a perfect lens with the kind of clarity I had been searching for much of my adult life. In that "lens" I saw my young daughter. I couldn't offer what I wanted to give her most of all—the promise I would live longer. Yet as I brought this "lens" closer to my awareness, it magnified a feeling of strength. I had no choice other than to see this, really. It was crucial to be strong for my daughter. Yet how to be strong when I felt so compromised? Some days nearly beaten?

While traveling between chemo hits on a baldheaded summer road trip, I saw the answer in a two-person kayak. Through the rest of the treatment, we were able to paddle far from the shores of our discontent. Then the task of recovery began. I had not realized this kind of recovery can be painfully slow. Life is ours again, but it is decidedly different. Recovery can be a lonely process as survivors try to "find themselves" emotionally, spiritually and physically. After cancer, we are no longer quite who we were or how we had once been.

During the spring of 2004, a friend suggested we go to a survivors' celebration at the Wake Robin Inn in nearby Connecticut. To be honest, I'd been avoiding those sorts of events. I hadn't joined a support group either. Although vitally rich and important for many people with cancer or those in recovery, I just wanted to get on with my life, without focusing so much on what I was trying so hard to leave behind. A dinner at a lovely inn on a June evening in Lakeville on the other hand—this was hard to resist. Thankfully, thankfully, I went. Once at the celebration, I was introduced to Holly Metcalf, the event's honored guest and speaker. Holly and her crew won the 1984 Olympic gold for the US, rowing a Women's Eight. Holly spoke about her belief in using rowing as a way to help women, of all ages, recover from breast cancer. She had started a successful team in Boston. Noreen was there, the person who envisioned our team, having recently received a community support grant from LAF. They were ready to get a new team started and I signed up that night. Holly's program, National WeCanRow, continues to develop similar rowing groups for survivors throughout the United States.

A sudden rush of freedom will come as we clear the dock this spring and and take our first stroke after all eight oars have their first stabilizing moment on the water. There is no list to remember, nothing else to pack. The basic equipment is a sturdy back and arms, eyes and legs, hands on an oar and a heart that still beats. We've done drills with both eyes closed, so maybe rowing without sight is even possible. Sandy, our indomitable heroine, is rowing with one lung. One lung! She has a fighter's spirit and if any of us think we can't row harder, there's Sandy. I see her, sit up taller, get steady, and think about balance. The reality of rowing is that it demands so much focus. To stay afloat, we have to keep our boat in balance. Just as in prayer, meditation or yoga, a rower seeks balance through clearing of the mind. We allow for the sound of the single commanding voice of our coach. When we are all in form, pulling the oars and driving those legs, moving in sync, and following in exact sequence with the person before us, we have balance. In those finest moments with the lake's peace that surrounds us, this act becomes an important metaphor for finding balance within our own lives. The life waiting for us back on shore.

WeCanRow was started to improve physical health, and to teach new skills. Most of us have no prior experience with rowing. We have shared goals of improvement and commitment, camaraderie and fun. The great bonus comes with the fine training we receive from our very dedicated coaches, Rob Bettigole and Dick Curtis. These two men are long time rowers and serious athletic individuals who recognize the arduous physical challenges our team has already endured. They are able to engage us in their passion for the sport, and encourage us to reach well beyond our own perceived limitations. We try to give back in energy what they have offered us in joy and optimism. Olympic athletes we ain't. Rob and Dick train us as if we could be.

So we practice and practice. Then we practice some more. We have drills we love, and drills we don't. Rowing an Eight (or a Four, or a Single for that matter) is a continual, unending process of fine tuning not unlike musical orchestration. The coach becomes the maestro and sets the pace. The rest of us follow the rhythm of the drill. We row while the boat runs and the sun sets, and we watch the seasons on the lake follow in their own movement around us, gratefully, beautifully, once more.

We are always interested in new members. We meet on the dock at 5pm, one evening each week. For more information about Tri-State WeCanRow, contact Noreen Driscoll-Breslauer at (860) 824-5765 or Kathleen Gavin at (845) 871-1049 and musicglass@frontiernet.net. For more information about National WeCanRow, check out www.wecanrowboston.org.

Revival of a Rowing Regatta?

In the late nineteenth Century, Poughkeepsie was renowned for both its railroad bridge and its grand Poughkeepsie Regatta, the greatest collegiate sporting event of its era. With luck we may witness this fall the rebirth of this historic event, during which young men vied for sporting immortality through the sport of rowing. The Hudson River Rowing Association has been quietly reviewing plans to run a revitalized regatta along the historic racecourse starting roughly at the Culinary Institute of America and finishing in the shadow of the Railroad Bridge. The regatta would be part of the festivities this fall to mark the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson's historic trip. Stay tuned.