Seesaw
My Dad’s a succinct man. How he begat a chatterbox like me remains a family mystery. He’s considerate and slow in his motions — but not economical. Totters around a good bit, sort of a sleepy guy. As a youngster, a bout with a viral infection damaged his hearing, so he grew up quiet, many thoughts swirling in his head, observing all he could of a muted world. Over time I’ve learned he’s a good communicator, but that took me uncharacteristically shutting up for extended periods of time to reckon.
I feel the seesaw of who’s caring for whom tilting my direction with my Dad. It accelerates every time I see him, but thankfully he’s a clean-living, active, happy person. He’s quietly enthusiastic about nature and the pursuit of sitting in it. He didn’t teach me to fish but as I’ve come to obsess on that pursuit I’ve encouraged he try to pick it up in parallel. He says his eyesight makes it hard to see the flies and tippets, and I understand.
I plan my excursions well in advance, leaning on that old ski racer trick of visualizing the contours of the landscape in preparation. As it happens, I’ve come to know a single river in southern Colorado really intimately, so when it came time to plot a trip for my Dad to join me on this year, I started flashing on specific riffles and holes to run him through. A foregone conclusion really, the two of us up that river, even if it’s my fifth multi-night trip to the same stretch this time around the sun. But what a place. The views of the granite faces and entire mountainsides covered by shimmering aspen stands never dull or are taken for granted. As we drive up, he recollects some of the spots in this river he’s familiar with, me swiveling my head intently, scanning the river with most of my attention, the road with the remainder. This habit drives my wife crazy, but I believe it’s perfectly reasonable to split your attention dually if you’re driving at a moderate speed up a river. Might miss something splashing if not. Always a surprise to see what critters you can perceive when you’re paying attention. Man’s animal mind put to a purpose greater than warring.
I reconnoiter a good, wide stretch to ease my Dad into fly-fishing after his prolonged hiatus and happily we walk through the willows, crashing and innately following the stock tracks trampled into the river bottom. Emerging onto the broad, flat bank I have to remind myself to slow the pace from frothing trot to something more suiting a relaxed 69-year old man at altitude.
Our first stream crossing illuminates a gathering feeling that builds over the course of the trip — for the first time in my adult life, my Dad has obviously declined. I barge into the shin-deep water, the current nothing more than diamond chop and make it a quarter of the way across the river before noticing my Dad struggling to get his footing, three feet off the bank and only up to his ankles. I tromp back and help him across, holding his hand firmly, our roles well reversed.
Settling into the bottom of a long, slow elbow of river, my Dad casts limp-wristedly with his minimalist Tenkara rod. After several suggestions from me, he’s casting serviceably and gets a strike. Misses it, but no matter, I miss plenty too. As he finds these half-successes, fish rising to his fly, but is unable to react quickly enough to set the hook, I wonder whether he’s paying attention. Whether he can actually see the fly? My agitation steadily rises and I try to figure out how to calmly, politely, and helpfully give him suggestions that result in him hooking a fish. That seesaw feeling wells up again, me thinking this is how it must have been to teach an obstinate childhood me just about anything, and I dig a little deeper for patience.
Forty-five minutes of flashes and misses later, I’m of two minds: thankful for the cooperative fish and frustrated that my Dad’s not connecting the dots. I’ve removed the complication of a rod with eyelets or even a reel, realizing that one-handed casting is the purest, simplest way to fly-fish; a stick and a string. I’ve walked him to the spot, I’ve tied on his rig, picked a fly that works and have got him casting ably enough to reach out and touch someone. I’m carrying his beer even! The least he could do is pay attention and listen when I holler at him to strike. And again it washes over me: settle down, let it happen, relax more, stress less. Next cast, a chunky rainbow slurps at his fly but misses it and I yelp a little, my Dad now primed for the resulting take — we both see the fish swirl back toward his fly and gulp it down. “HIT!” I holler, and my Dad just stands there. “HITHIT!” I scream a fraction later, but nothing’s happening still. Out of desperation and frustration, I grab my Dad’s hand in mine, and set the hook for him. “There. You’ve got a fish on your line!”
I back up a few steps to give him room to play it and for a few seconds, he’s solidly connected. The combination of the fight of the fish, Dad’s inexperience and the admittedly touchy Tenkara soon become more than the sum of their parts and my Dad’s hanging onto a suddenly straightened rod. “Progress!” I chirp in what I hope is heard as an encouraging tone.
Over the following two days, we fish deliberately, slowly and in the flattest sections of river we can access in order to minimize the physical effort. I cajole my Dad to keep his casting technique consistent, and mostly, he does. He makes progress in aiming his casts, and as I point out what drifts might produce fish, it occurs to me that I’ve not got a terribly receptive student with me. Here and there, I leave him on his own to fish a long bank where he can go at his pace, figure things out in a way that satisfies him. I catch my share, a few times right where I tell my Dad they’ll be and when I do I feel a little proud of myself, satisfied that my knowledge and execution are adding together. He goes on not catching any fish, but every time I express to him my regret that he’s not hooked up to anything, he brushes it off and says he’s happy to stand in the water and do the process of fly-fishing. I take this as my reminder to ease off the expectations a bit — after all, I’m in an amazingly beautiful place doing my favorite thing on the planet with my Father, who’s enjoying himself nicely. Despite the massive thundershowers that interrupt our days, we settle into a well-worn groove as father and son, each trying to understand the other but the silence between us has grown comfortable, not awkward or loaded. Time does that.
I wake slowly to a very vivid dream our last morning out, and I lie there in the tent savoring the scenes and corresponding aches they incur, happily in the mental half-light. Gauzy edges on my fantasy, but sharp relief in the specifics, thinking of an old lover and swirling the images around the confines of my wakening mind. I’m lucky to wake up like this most days, comfortable and dreaming of unspeakable things. I’m conscious of where I am — in a tent, on top of my truck — but all the inertia of my dream halts abruptly as I roll over to see the back of my aging father’s head. I lie there disappointed for a second (it was that good a dream) but slowly I study the shape of his head, his hairline, his skin. I’m looking at my future self, I know it. A linear progression is what’s left for me, from here where I am to there, where he is. I’m choiceless in that matter, the encoding in my genes locks many of his characteristics in. But seeing my Father in this light, at my age and from my wary perspective, that feels spooky. I laid there gazing at him, feeling fond and appreciative for him, looking at his skin and ears and recognizing a great deal of myself in what I saw. Age and aging doesn’t frighten me because I gain experience by the day, benefitting from many of my habits and always keen of life’s delights. But lying there next to my Dad, I started to think of the irretrievability of my past.
People I’ve wronged, lies I’ve told, the battles he and I had as I was coming up, all of them flitter through my waking mind, darting about like sparrows and giving way to my happier formative memories. Valleys I’ve stared up, Moose I’ve startled, fish I’ve played, dogs I’ve nuzzled, women I’ve longed for, cars I’ve owned, memories of the sheer possibility of moments, a few missed connections, different forks I could have chosen, former trips with great friends, muskrats I’ve killed, hummingbirds I’ve rescued — all this flooding me in the temporal distortion of first light.
Quite a heavy way to wake up, but heavy with the perspective of a sentinel mountaintop and the sound of a nearby cascade for balance. Drinking our coffee that morning, we didn’t say much, but I made sure to tell my Dad I love him. As we kitted up to fish our final day, I gave my kitschy little prayer to the assembled gods of the woods. When a breeze whipped up and old man crow cackled overhead, rushing past us with some smaller birds in hot pursuit, I felt my own peace, quiet and grateful and focused on the puzzle of today.
