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July 30, 2007

Goin' fishing

By JOY HAMPTON

Summer has been flying by and somehow I feel I’ve missed it.

I tried to go fishing last summer. Got my line caught in a tree every time I tried to cast.

Daddy used to have a sign hanging in the lake cabin that said, “You can’t fish and worry at the same time.”

At least, not if you do it right.

Going fishing is more about attitude than action. If you have a thought in your head, when you’re fishing, it’s no more than a prayer of gratitude regardless of whatever else is going on in the world life is good.

Real life is not what’s playing on the news or topping the headlines.

Real life is what’s happening on the inside of a person, where heart and soul and mind come together and find peace with the world.

Daddy knew, above all, what it really meant to be “gone fishin.’” He baited hooks or rigged lines with jigs and steered the boat until grandkids were old enough to want to steer it under his supervision.

Dad always knew the best fishing holes, and he loved to sit back with pole in hand and watch the rest of us. We fished all night and woke up to Mom cooking pancakes and the sound of Dad’s electric knife out back as he filleted cooler chests full of the night’s catch.

Fourth of July was fireworks on the lake viewed from the deck of the pontoon boat, afternoon outings to “sandy beach.” Evening meals included loads of sliced, home grown tomatoes and fried fish. Come dark, we went out fishing again.

But Dad’s been gone a few years, and those lazy summer days seemed to have drifted away with the sale of the lake cabin.

My family is strewn across these United States and my son trots across the globe courtesy of the U.S. Navy. I’ve seen my grandson once in his year-long life because usually they’re somewhere so far away it’s next to impossible to manage a visit.

I’m not complaining. Things will come around sooner or later, and my family will find another place to gather once we’ve all adjusted to the fact that Dad, Grandpa to the kids, can’t be the anchor that brings us together anymore.

We’ll find the way back to each other eventually. Because that’s what families do. Sometimes, it just takes a few years to regroup when you’ve lost your focal point.

Daddy drew us together, not because we liked smelling of fish, but because we loved each other. He had a self-composure that was drawn from his love of bringing pleasure to others.

Back home you could always finding him “piddling” with something, mending what was broken, recycling junk he’d picked up off the side of the road into something useful, or hoeing a huge garden to produce vegetables he’d mostly give away to neighbors and friends.

But I’ll always remember him best in his captain’s chair on the pontoon boat, sipping coffee, fishing pole in hand. While we pulled in the day’s catch and argued over whose fish was biggest. He just enjoyed our antics.

Gratitude for all he’d been given was a way of life for him. Perhaps that was the key to his contentment.

That, and you really can’t fish and worry at the same time.

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