Cane poles

Warning to the sophisticated angler: leave the chartreuse-diamond-encrusted-double-spoon-weedless-buzz-bait-lure of the year at home. Catching a fish in the “upper” pond requires three simple elements: a cane pole, a can of corn, and a child.

Four or five years ago, a friend, Marnie, brought Katie, her 4-year old daughter, to the farm for a “day in the country.” This was a hard working single mother – as I remember, she had two jobs and relied on her family for childcare and, I suspect, groceries. She was a waitress at the small diner on Ann Arbor’s west side where I earned my current dosage of statins. She was working on an associate’s degree at Washtenaw County Community College as a medical technician. She was a kind person.

One June morning, somewhere between my sixth and seventh refill of coffee, we ended up in conversation about her daughter. Marnie bemoaned her daughter’s schedule that took her from home to her grandmother’s home, to a half-day school of some sort, back to home. Very little of the child’s life was spent outdoors.

I don’t have children. I do, however, remember the importance that mud, grass stains, sunshine, breezes, bug bites, and dandy lions contributed to my development. I especially remember the investment my father made helping me catch my first fish.

I choose the word “investment” very carefully. From this side of childhood, I can now appreciate the hundreds upon hundreds of investments my parents made on my behalf. In the 1960s and 1970s, my parents weren’t tasked with the frenzy of minivan deliveries many of my peers seem to oblige their children (my brother and I rode our bikes or walked to school, practice, games, friends’ homes, the store . . .). Instead, Mom and Dad’s investments were to give us tools and give us independence. One of my Mother’s favorite lines is that she “taught us to walk, then taught us to walk away.”

Dinner meant that the four of us sat at the same table, napkins in lap, passing to the right, and asking to be excused. Grace preceded every meal and there was no debate about the menu – what was served was eaten. Most importantly, however, was the conversation: an unforced sharing of the day, lessons on civics and civility, business and budgets, life and laughter.

We weren’t a Norman Rockwell painting, but we had a solid, respectful, happy family. Thanks Mom and Dad.

Back to that first fish. There was a sprawling campus across the street from our house that was the headquarters for the IHM nuns and housed a girls’ preparatory school. On the grounds was a pond with an island in its center accessible by a plank bridge. One afternoon, my father – an engineer (but don’t hold that against him!) – took me to the pond to fish for bluegills. Dad had bought a child size Zebco casting rod for me and I carried a can of night crawlers gathered from our driveway after the previous evening’s rain.

After two attempts casting, I snagged my hook on (what I was certain was pirate’s treasure) a submerged log and managed to snarl the reel beyond recovery. My knee high memories won’t let me confirm, but I’m fairly certain that this was the first time I heard a swear word. The engineer reared and he began to disassemble, detangle and suppress cussing.

I think I went after a grasshopper.

Dad was very busy and I noticed the bobber twitching where the line was still in the water. I grabbed the line, pulled up my trophy three and one half inch blue gill and brought it to Dad. He was sweating, frustrated, dealing with snarls of line . . . he also smiled and said, “good job.”

On the Bog’s upper pond, Katie’s laser-like attention span let her focus on fishing for up to 35 seconds at any one time. Somewhere in the mix of juice boxes, rainbow ponies, and icky bugs, Katie hurled a hook full of corn a full six feet out into the pond.

She caught a four inch bluegill. I was never so happy to have my own personal record broken.