“Kate, paddle harder!” Mom’s voice was like a part of the storm, and I thought about pretending I hadn’t heard.
As the canoe bucked against the huge white-caps, I bowed the top of my head to the gusting wind and dug into the water with all my strength. It may have been a mistake to take two canoes this year. My family had been coming up here to Quetico Provincial Park for as long as I could remember, and we’d always taken just one canoe. Rachel and I had been crammed between the gunnels, along with the tent, clothes, gear, and food for a week. It had been a tight fit, but it had always worked somehow.
This year was different, though. I’d started middle school, gotten a training bra and my period, and realized I could no longer remember the voices of my dolls. Rachel and I were getting bigger, too big to fit in a canoe with both parents and all our stuff, too big to huddle under our rain gear and trust that the grown ups would get us safely to land.
Looking up over the bow, I could barely see Dad and Rachel through the sheets of rain. Dad was paddling with a man’s strength and an expert’s skill. Rachel just sat there in the bow, her paddle resting on her knees, her hand trailing in the water. I looked daggers at her and got a wave full in the face.
“Mom, I don’t know if I can do this. I think I need a break,” I shouted into the wind, trying hard to keep the whine out of my voice.
“I need you!” she yelled back to me. “Keep paddling, girl!”
When Mom and Dad had first told us about this plan, I’d rolled my eyes. I didn’t want to be paired with Mom. She had changed in the last couple of years, going from a perfectly respectable parent to someone who said and did ridiculous things. She hummed along with department store music now, and sometimes, she even danced a little. In public. She was putting a lot of effort into trying to control me, and she seemed to favor Rachel.
“So I get to paddle with Kate. She’s such a trooper!” The patronizing tone in Mom’s voice was totally obvious, and I rolled my eyes. A trooper? What the heck was that anyway?
Most of the trip had been fine. I paddled with Mom, either silent or arguing. When we made camp, I crawled into the tent and read my book for hours at a time. In past years, Rachel and I had played among the rocks and trees, creating little worlds with our dolls. This year, my world was the tent, the sleeping bag, and the soft sound of pages turning.
When it was time to break camp again, I helped pack up the tent and load the canoes. The sky was cloudy, but Dad felt we had this chance to get to the next site before the storm hit. When we pushed off from the bank, the water was like glass. The paddles made little whirlpools on the surface as the island campsite disappeared behind us. I glanced back over my shoulder, and Mom smiled at me. I turned back in my seat.
The sky became darker, and the storm hit us with a wall of rain. I curled my bare feet over the wooden ribs in the bottom of the canoe and paddled as hard as I could. After fifteen minutes, water sloshed over my feet with each stroke. Waves were crashing over the bow, and the canoe rocked back and forth.
Dad had put us in the old wood and canvas canoe he’d restored, and with its wooden keel, it was beautiful and stable in calm water. But the keel made it hard to control in a storm, pulling it sideways to the waves. Getting broadside to the waves meant tipping in the space of a couple of minutes. Mom, paddling stern for the first year, was fighting hard to keep the bow into the wind.
My arms were aching, but Mom wouldn’t let us stop. Suddenly, the bow was airborne for a moment, as we flew off the crest of one wave and landed in the deep valley between swells. The next wave came with a crash and drenched me in icy water, and the canoe shook like a wet dog.
“Get down!” Mom yelled. “Get down on your knees!”
I scrambled out of my seat, the wooden ribs of the canoe digging into my knees, and continued to paddle with strength I didn’t know I had. With a lower center of gravity, the canoe wasn’t rocking and shaking quite as much.
I glanced over my shoulder at Mom, kneeling in the stern. The hood of her rain parka had blown back, and the dark hair escaping from her ponytail had been plastered to her face. Her eyes were intense and worried, and she paddled hard, biting her lower lip. When she saw me look at her, she smiled.
“You’re doing great! Keep up the good work.” Her voice was almost lost in the screaming wind.
I smiled back and turned forward again, digging into the water. It felt like we were moving backwards, and Dad and Rachel seemed to be losing us.
“Mom, we’re falling behind!” I yelled. “We have to catch up.”
We both paddled harder and faster, hunched low in the boat, and I felt us begin to move against the wind. I was using strength I didn’t know I had, and I could sense Mom doing the same. Slowly, we began to gain on Dad and Rachel.
Then suddenly, the storm stopped. The wind died down, and the rain became a drizzle. I felt us flying over the water, the cliff on our right whizzing by as if we were in a car.
I felt a sudden lag as Mom called out breathlessly, “Time to rest!”
When I turned back to look at her, she was back in her seat, her paddle resting on her knees. I pulled myself back up, and we floated there for a moment, silent. Then we headed slowly for the next island, where Dad and Rachel were pulling their canoe onto the shore.
Dad waded in to meet our canoe and held it steady as we climbed out. My legs shook as they bore my weight, but I helped lift the bow of the heavy wooden canoe.
“I thought I’d lost you guys for a second there,” Dad said softly, looking at Mom.
“Couldn’t have happened,” Mom answered, her voice hoarse from shouting over the wind. “Kate’s a real trooper.”
I looked from my blistered hands to Mom’s, the same shape and size. When I glanced at her face, she was smiling proudly. For a moment, her eyes held mine as they must have done when I was a baby, and then she looked away, grabbed the heavy food pack, and began to drag it up to the campsite. I dropped my paddle and grabbed one handle of the pack from her as the sun shone tentatively for the first time that day.
