Thus noting his hyperbole, yet liking him more and more, I was happy to acquiesce one morning in July when Bart suggested I take a rowing lesson with him. The morning’s tide suited a rowing lesson: The currents, which were usually strong enough to pull a boat the right way round, lessened at low tide, and I relished the chance to learn how to handle the oars more adeptly. We set off in one of the House dinghies, Bart placed in the stern so he could watch my form, he said; and I took the oars, choosing not to smile at this. The day was not yet hot and the slow tempo of my rowing drew a little breeze into play about us. I leaned forward with both hands, almost touching Bart’s chest as he faced me, and then pulled back, catching as much of the flat waters as I could. Bart was teaching me how to feather my oars—the part I most loved when Papa rowed—the long oars stretching across the water, the blade sinking in and pulling through, popping up at the end of the stroke, and then the swift turn of the wrist that flattened the blades, feathering as they sped backward, readying for the next dip. The oars had fit snugly in Papa’s hands, and they seemed to gather the sea in easily, unlike my choppy attempts, which shot us forward and then left us stopped dead while the oars slapped the water as I drew backward and forward upon the seat.

“Why do you think it is called feathering?” I asked Bart, pausing.

“What do you imagine flying to feel like?” he replied.

I looked up at the gulls above us, hectoring one another with great raucous shrieks and then in an instant becoming sublimely silent, turning and diving and riding the air on their long gray wings.

“Smooth,” I answered. “Like sliding down silk.”

He grinned. “When I feather my oars, I have the impression I am riding water as if it were air.”

“Like a bird?”

“Like an arrow, shot clean from its quiver, feathering across the water. Like this—” He stood up, rocking the boat terribly, and put his hand on my shoulder as he climbed over me to sit in the bow seat behind mine, where he slipped the second pair of oars into the water.