The Fishing Trip

Wednesday, Mar. 07, 2007-2:46 pm
We were in the Fort Lauderdale airport waiting to board our return flight after our vacation. Nicolas bit a pretzel in half and he looked at it, and then up at me and said "This is an M for Mommy". He turned it 45 degrees and said "Now it is a '3' because you are �30 something�.

(O.K. that word �something� must be the new math term for 30 plus an additional 20)

Then he turned it again and said "W is because you are wonderful. Thanks again mom, for taking me fishing.". Aw-w-w-w

It would have been so easy to have gotten out of that fishing trip. Everyone else around us would have confirmed to him that Mom just can't take him fishing. (�Are you kidding?, they would have said. � Her? Can you just see her trying to bait a hook with those long nails? ha!" )

He had been counting down the days and hours until it was time to go on a fishing trip on a motor boat , that a friend's teenaged son had promised to take him on. A few hours before they were to go, the parent called to say that the boy couldn't take him fishing after all. He was so sad and disappointed that it was heartbreaking.

He said �I know you are probably going to say no but...I just want to ask you something...� and then he asked me if there was any possible way that I could take him someplace to catch a fish. He expected the answer to be no.

I wanted to say that I didn't think that I could...

But I knew that I couldn't say no.

There had been a horrible accident a few miles away that day. A 12 year old boy ran across a busy 4 lane street and was killed by a car. I couldn't help but wonder , what was the last thing he might have asked his mother ? What was it that he wished for that he never had the chance to have? Sometimes , in the case of terminal illness, we know we are saying goodby to someone who is dying. Most often, we don't know that it is the very last time we will ever see someone. We know that in painful retrospect, played over and over again in our mind.

My son was so elated when I said I would take him to the pier and we would rent a fishing rod. There was joy in his eyes. He held my hand as we walked a half a mile up the beach to the dock. The soft wind and the sun felt warm and comforting on our skin. Birds flew above us as we walked along the shore line. It was one of the most peaceful and gratifying times in my life.

Reality time: I am standing on a pier with my son with a rented fishing rod and the complimentary bucket of chum that is included in the rental. It was anybody's guess if I could put bait on a hook. I asked the dumbfounded clerk if he thought it an unreasonable expectation that I,(with minimal skills in the seafaring department) could reasonably expect to bait the hook and operate the reel. I guess he thought it was a rhetorical question. That explains why any verbal response besides 'huh?' was offered . I took the shrug of indifference as a vote of confidence.

The bucket of crayfish heads that was included was frozen. It lessened the anticipated horrible odor by a factor a about one half. We cast off and every 30 seconds he would scream� I got something!� and reel it in, only to find the bait still on the hook. In some cases a clever fish took a small nibble but didn't get caught.

Hope springs eternal . Every time he felt tugging on the line he said �Hey mamma we are having a fish for dinner!�

We never caught anything but a ball of seaweed. That was maybe for the best, as I had exhausted my tolorance for the smell of thawing bait. I didn't have what it would take to remove a live fish from a hook.

Some of the wonderful things in life are the things you planned and took steps to make happen. Once in a while, something special and magical happens to you. It happens spontaneously, and only if you let it. The best things in life could be missed entirely because we automatically said "No I can't" .

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