Alex embraced a new hobby this past summer. This one fits right into his overall 60 year old white man vibe of classic rock, bowling, and what appears to be moderate to severe psoriasis. Actually, the doctor told us the disgusting rash he developed on both legs was most likely folliculitis aggravated by too much hot tubbing one weekend- yet another 60 year old white man pursuit.
It's fishing. His best friend Matthew got him into it because Matthew's grandma lives by a stocked lake in a bougier part of Lake County. I've seen random kids fishing in the smaller ponds of our own non-bougie area, but all they ever seem to catch are Miller Lite bottles and the occasional patch of folliculitis. Actually, it's nice where I live- we are minutes away from a plethora of beaches. I always tell my kids how lucky we are to live here. When I was growing up, we went to the beach maybe once a summer, and it involved crossing over to the dark side (Indiana). Here, we can have impromptu beach days whenever we'd like! Are the beach sands white and pristine? Well of course not, they're brown and have to be raked for goose poop. Is the water crystal clear? It can be a little murky. But do we have a great time soaking up the rays and floating our cares away? Sometimes!
When I was a kid, we'd also drive long distances to fish. Well, my dad would fish, my mom would watch him fish, and my sister and I would wonder aloud if there was any endeavor more excruciating than fishing. Honestly, it seemed like he never caught a thing. But that can't possibly be true or why we would go so often? Was it a punishment of some sort? Was taking your kids to the Kankakee River the 1987 equivalent of telling kids today "no screen time?" You were screwing around and you broke the door off the TV console. You're in big trouble, young lady. Go get my worms.
Perhaps my dad would have had better luck at Matthew's grandma's abundantly stocked lake. It certainly could have been a quicker punishment. If I'd have grown up around these parts, we could have been at the lake within minutes. Dad could catch a handful of blue gills, toss them back in as to illustrate the futility of life, and then get us home all before my mother could even piece together where we'd gone and what the heck had happened to the TV stand.
But isn't that the irony of parenthood. An activity I loathed as a child came back into my life this past year in the form of a skinny 12 year old boy and his tackle box of ambition. Between myself, Matthew's mom, and Jack's mom, we managed to divvy up the role of Unlicensed Young Boy Fishing Uber into manageable nuggets. It truly takes a village, and that village is full of moms with camping chairs, Elin Hildebrand novels, and terse smiles for the grizzled old fishing guys who always have some sage advice for the kids. They might recommend Lily Lake right after sunrise. They might say something helpful about the amount of pepperoni the boys are using as bait. They may or may not question why Alex keeps physically getting into the lake and if he knows he has a hook stuck through his finger.
As Alex collected fishing wisdom and supplies, he'd ask to go more and more. Oftentimes, my village nowhere to be found, it was just me and him. Once I dropped him off at Bangs Lake while I went to run errands, and that felt like a low in my parenting career. I couldn't just sit with him and keep him company while he fished? I couldn't watch like my mom did? Not to mention the grizzled fishing guys seemed especially grizzled that morning. That was sure a lot of beer in their cooler for 9 am.
One morning, Alex talked me into renting a boat at Independence Grove. He had just purchased a huge nylon net the day before at Bass Pro Shop, and he was desperate to use it. We had to get into deeper waters in order to potentially need the net, deeper than Alex could reasonably wade into from the pier. Proving just how much I loved this annoying kid, we headed out early, purchased worms at the Ace Hardware (pepperoni would not do for the kind of catch Alex had in mind), and headed to the boat rental pavilion on the lake. Alex did all the talking, selecting the size of boat we would need and telling the college kid behind the counter that we would take a motor, too. "The works, my good man," Alex basically said, sliding my credit card across the counter while I wondered if using a boat motor was hard. I did not really know my way around boats, not to mention boat MOTORS. Actually, Alex and I as a pair were not especially good with boats at all. We had just a couple weeks ago had to be rescued from the middle of Devil's Lake during a boy scout canoeing trip gone wrong. The part that went wrong was that neither of us was strong enough to row back to shore. Plus I'd lost my hat in the breeze, so I was pissy.
Over an hour went by with no activity. Alex would fiddle with the worms and lures, casting in and reeling all to no avail. I tried to relax on my soaking wet bench seat while simultaneously yelling at Alex to sit down, be careful, stop rocking the boat, stop dicking around with the motor, don't eat chips with the hands that touched the worms, etc. Once in a while, he got some promising tugs on his line, but when he'd pull in, the bait would be gone and so would the fish. Grizzled fishing men called out to us from the shore. Had we caught anything yet? Alex, still optimistic but increasingly aware that our boat time was almost up, would call back no. No, no fish yet. He looked longingly at his new nylon net, at his gigantic blue box of various lines, lures, bobbers, whatnot. He gazed into the calm waters of the lake and made a wish.
Then, something amazing happened. Something that got my heart pumping and made me feel differently than I'd ever felt before. Something that Alex will remember for the rest of his life. There was a jerk on his fishing line, and Alex started to reel in. "Oh my God, it's a big one," he said, suddenly the most alert he'd ever been in his whole wide awake life. He fought with the fishing pole, trying to pull in his catch. For a moment, I rehearsed in my head how I would make Alex feel better when we discovered it was a dead badger or something. But then, I saw it. It was the biggest fish I'd ever seen up close, and it was there on his line, wriggling madly right beneath the surface of the water.
"GET THE NET!" Alex yelled.
The next ten seconds were a blur of activity. Alex tried to maintain control of his fishing pole while I shot up and grabbed the net. The beast of a fish was pulled up and scooped into the net, and somehow we got it aboard, into the boat, which was rocking so wildly that I'm shocked we didn't flip over. We dumped the fish onto the floor of the boat where it flopped crazily in all it's wet, slimy glory. Alex fumbled trying to pick it up, and I screamed nonsensical, ultimately unhelpful directions. Eventually strong arming the lake monster into a good grip, Alex shrieked at me to get out my phone- which I luckily had handy with the emergency boat number pre-dialed. I exited out of the dial mode, switched to camera, and snapped a picture. Proof of dominance. Proof of joy. Alex smiling hugely, so proud of his great big catch (Northern Pike, he'd inform me later), the happiness radiating off of him in tangible waves. I felt like a mirror of my son, my pulse racing from the excitement, and together we laughed and waved back at the fishermen on the shore who had been cheering on us the whole time.
Then, without much fanfare and only one quick last look, Alex dumped the fish back into the water and said, "Ok, we can go return the boat."
Heading home, classic rock blaring through the car speakers, Alex and I relived the moment while he texted Matthew and Jack the picture of his big catch. I was still coming down from the high of the moment, a fishing expedition unlike any other that I'd ever been on. It sure didn't feel like a punishment that day. It was a new core memory with my son, a story we would both retell all summer. He'll probably tell it to his own kids when he gets older and takes them out onto the lake. Of course, his kids will probably hate fishing. I'm sure that's the way it goes. "Fishing is fun," he might insist. "Heck, even your grandma Jackie used to like it!"
