Chivalry

A tiny rowboat approached our north shore this evening from the east, one of those old-fashioned, blunt-nosed dinghys with no motor.  From a distance I thought it was occupied by a couple of kids, probably teenagers.  It progressed slowly through the still water, stroke by stroke, magnetically drawn toward the setting sun that was preparing to drop out of sight behind the horizon.

As this antiquated watercraft passed in front of our house, I was surprised to see an elderly, white-haired gentleman rowing.  He seemed slender and bony; his head jutted forward from humped shoulders the way my grandpa’s did before he died. Intent on his job, he pulled the oars like one practiced from youth. His strokes were strong, synchronized. In the back of the boat sat his similarly-aged sweetheart, dressed in a loose long-sleeved blouse and sunbonnet with ribbons tied in a bow beneath her chin.  Her hands lay quietly in her lap.   

I found myself staring at this scene from another age, and wondered how far the couple intended to go – if they were indeed chasing the sun on its way down, down, down below the trees.  But I couldn’t know their destination.  The blinding reflection on the water forced me to look away, which seemed right somehow.  This was their boat ride after all, their private moment, and I was an intruder.  

Perhaps they were imagining themselves to be younger, I thought.  Perhaps they were replaying some favorite memory from a summer day years ago. How romantic.

Chivalry is not dead.