The Geneva Lake Sailing School

When I was a boy, I went to school. At first, the school days were hot and sweaty, my ADD roiled by the sultry classrooms that lacked air conditioning. At least I don’t recall any air conditioning. And then, the days grew colder and shorter and darker. Night came early, and morning came late. It was winter, and I was in school. And when spring came, I’d wait for those first 60 degree days of March because everyone knows it’s easier to dominate in Four Square with short sleeves. I’d walk home from school on those first warm days, always breaking off the shelf of ice on the edge of the road that the melting snow left behind. I’d sprinkle table salt on my driveway after those school days. The sloped part of the driveway would melt free of snow and ice, but the bottom of the drive, right where the hoop was, would always be icy. And so we’d chip and we’d sprinkle and we’d get that driveway playable. Either way, there was school the next day.

This was school for me. In a classroom, on time, every day, learning about things I needed to know but didn’t care about. Is it important to know how to divide five digit numbers? In fourth grade, it is. At age 34? I can do without it. Those school days were fun, and I learned and I grew and I was tripped by some mean kids one spring on the baseball diamond and then I tripped some nice kids the following fall. It was what I knew of school.

My son knows school as something different. At least now he does. Before last summer his school was like mine. It was about pencils and paper, and mechanical pencils if your dad was nice. It was about bullies at recess and teacher’s pets in the classroom. It was as it has always been. And then it was August. And he had to wake up early for school on Monday morning, but he was able to wear shorts and we forgot his life vest. This was a different sort of school, but he was about to learn anyway. And when I dropped him off near the water, a few minutes late, and he walked slowly to the assembled group of kids who were mostly his age, I felt the need to introduce him. I wanted to park and walk with him and tell the other kids that Thomas was cool, and that they should be nice to him because he’s, because he’s my son. I wanted to take my verbal hammer and break that thick ice for him, but I didn’t. I drove away, with a tinge of sadness that I had willingly dropped him at school without walking him to his room and kissing him on the forehead. Instead, I dropped him at school. Sailing school.

When I was younger, my parents did their best to encourage me at those things that I professed an interest in. That is true to this day, as I on a Monday decided that I liked the idea of sailing a Laser sailboat and on a Tuesday my father was lobbing offers all around the Eastern seaboard aimed at anyone who had a late 60s model 30′ Hinckley for sale. While my parents appropriately responded to my proficiencies, they didn’t introduce many mysteries. I wasn’t brought to a tennis court and offered lessons by anyone. When other kids were skiing at Majestic and then Americana I didn’t get to go along, unless the school bus was taking me. But then it wasn’t just me, it was the whole school, so I was invited less than I was forced. I didn’t do these things, and I didn’t care.

It turns out, with age as my guide, that I didn’t care because I didn’t know. I didn’t realize that some kids took sailing lessons and others went skiing. I didn’t know that tennis courts existed outside of the cracked courts that lined the western edge of the Conference Point Camp. We’d get kicked off those courts sometimes, but mostly just when my aunt was in town and she wanted us to believe that she could play tennis. She couldn’t. She shouldn’t.

On that Monday in August, I gave my son what I thought he should have. I gave him a gift that he might take with him his entire life, and when he is 34 and dividing five digit numbers long form is no longer needed or thoroughly understood, he will take this gift with him. Sailing is like that. It knows no age limits. It requires fitness, sure, but I’d argue that sailing a fixed keel sailboat on a lightly winding day doesn’t require any level of fitness beyond the taking and exhaling of breath. A beating heart will be a necessity too, but that would also be a necessity if sitting on one’s couch waiting for the Wheel of Fortune to finally start.

When I picked Thomas up from the Geneva Lake Sailing School on that Monday, he was smiling. It wasn’t a huge grin like my five year old daughter would offer me, it was a sly controlled grin, the sort that eight year old boys everywhere offer for everything. He was happy, and he told me what he did and how he did it. He put the sailboat together and took it apart, and his only complaint was that the wind was too stiff to actually sail, so they didn’t get to. But they did get to swim even if he had to keep his life vest on during the dunk, and he did get a pudding at lunch, so things weren’t as bad as they might have initially seemed.

Tuesday was also windy. It was windy and there was the putting together and taking apart of sailboats, and there was another sly smile and another complaint about the wind. But there were cookies. Wednesday was sunny and the winds were light. There was sailing. Actual, hard core, hand on the tiller sailing. He liked to steer, but didn’t like the holding the lines. There were more cookies that day, more slight smiles, more promises of better wind and fairer skies to follow.

Thursday was perfect. He sailed and he sailed. I went out in the boat to take photos of him. He was embarrassed by that. It was school but it was on a lake, so better to be in a boat taking pictures of this school than in the hallway taking pictures of real school. And Friday, with winds so light they barely moved a leaf, there was a coronation and a parade and certificates and clapping, and there was cake. I was proud of my son. Proud of my world class home town sailing school. And I was proud of my lake. The next day, Thomas and I sailed together for the first time. He navigated, I handled the lines. We ate cookies after.

We sailed more during the days that followed. Sometimes in light wind, others in gusting wind, and at least one time in a wind that blew in circles around our unstable little boat. I donated a very nice hat to the lake that day, a blue hat with a big white whale on it, an unfortunate donation by submission courtesy one rapidly shifting wind and one obliging boom. It was a nice hat, but a better time sailing.

Next summer, Thomas will be at it again, in another Pram Camp, sailing on Mondays and sailing on Tuesdays. I’ll take pictures from the boat, and I’ll clap with encouragement, and he’ll smile just a bit. The Geneva Lake Sailing School will host this class out of their cozy quarters at the Lake Geneva Yacht Club, and they’ll arrange tens of others like it over the course of a Lake Geneva summer in much the same manner as they have for the last seventy summers. Sign your kids up now, and give them a gift that they can take with them for the rest of their lives. The Geneva Lake Sailing School, it’s just like school, except with life vests and more cookies.