I Went Fishing with My Boy and My Love

I went fishing on Sunday with my boy and my love.

I woke up before the sun and untangled myself from two strong arms and the warm tumble of a goose down comforter. I shivered myself into too many layers of clothes - long underwear, turtleneck, sweats, wool sweater, thick black Carhart coveralls, cotton socks, wool socks and fleece lined waterproof boots.

My irritation grew with each layer.
Long underwear and sweats bunched at my knees. Turtleneck and sweatshirt crept up my arms, leaving my wrists to face the wooly itch of my sweater alone and unprotected. My roomy Carharts decided to masquerade as skinny jeans and the straps hung down my back, tantalizingly out of reach.

“I hate layers!” I whined, stamping my feet in a stunningly good impression of a two year old throwing a tantrum.
“You get cold,” my love reminded me.
“But I’m un-com-for-table,” I argued.
My love sighed. He’s heard this tape before.
“My clothes don’t fit right!” I shouted at the shoulders that shrugged out the door. “FINE!” I grabbed my favorite olive green Pashmina out of my closet and wrapped it around my neck. I may be a stuffed, black denim sausage, but that didn’t mean I had to forego the soft elegance I was born to enjoy.

I clomped down the stairs and was greeted with a smile and a steaming travel mug of coconut chai tea.
My boy grinned from behind his mug of hot chocolate.
The toaster dinged.

Toast was hastily buttered and jammed.
My love grabbed fishing poles.
The dogs were shooed into the garage.
We piled into the car and zoomed into the sunrise.

Less than half an hour later we were navigating through the bramble to our favorite winter fishing spot on the Sandy. The water sparkled past the rocks, rushing around the bend into a diaphanous blanket of fog that had been trapped in the space between night and morning.

My boy baited my hook and we plunked our lines into the water. The current grabbed my line and swept my hook into a dance with the rolling pebbles at the bottom of the river. The dance ended when my hook settled into the quiet eddy just below the drop off.

“Winter steelhead find quiet spots for resting,” my love instructed. “They swim up river in schools and pull off to rest in the slow moving water. If they’re here, that’s where they’ll be.”

With my line set, I settled in for the wait and discovered a dip in the boulder that hugged my round and well-layered rear end perfectly.
My boy sat on the bank above me. Confident that his fingers knew enough to telegraph the unnatural bump that indicates a hungry fish is nosing the bait, he allowed his eyes to wander.
“Mummy, look at this rock,” he exclaimed with an excited grin that showed off his still gappy smile, “it’s orange.”
He pushed it toward me with the toe of his too big canvas fishing boot.
“Wow, it is orange! I wonder how that happened.”
My boy wasn’t listening; he was finding another river rock. This one was smooth and grey, and fairly common looking, but oh, the sound it made when he banged it against the boulder, like a muffled steeple bell glorifying all that is good in this world.

My love stood lure fishing on the bank, ten yards down the river.
Cast and reel, cast and reel.

Each time he threw out his line, he cast years of worry to the river. Within moments, I saw the young boy from Eastern Oregon come to life within the man that I love. When you meet someone in midlife, you miss the childhood moments, the life defining events. When I fish with my love, I am allowed a glimpse into those missed moments and I know him as a child and I understand him more as a man.

We left the river with no fish in our bags, but our hearts were full and our souls were fed.
Definitely a morning well spent.