Cracking the Code

A summer of learning my kid

This summer hasn’t been a writing one in that I haven’t written much. But can’t living and collecting moments also qualify as writing? If so, that’s largely what I’ve been up to this summer. “Writing” a lot.

Over the past few months, I’ve been consciously working on my connection with my younger son, K. He turned 13 in April, and a lot of life changed for him between the ages of 11 and 13. He lost a parent-figure, started the awkward middle school years, lost many friends to other schools, and watched his brother expand into his teenage high school world.

K and I have always connected through cooking and baking (the latest a peach pie!), but I was ready to find something else for us to share, and he started talking (a lot) about fishing.

This was a natural entry point for me. My grandfather had taken me fishing on the Conestoga River, and I’d reeled up numerous little flopping panfish we called sunnies while he puffed on his cigar in his retro lawn chair with woven turquoise and blue plastic. “That’s it, kid!” he’d say, hoisting himself from the chair to assist.

With family friends who owned a boat in Avalon, New Jersey, I crested the waves of the salty, cold bay to fish for summer flounder and striped bass. We’d bring the fish back to the beach house and cook them on the grill with lemon and butter wrapped in foil.

And, in addition to my fishing history, I had the camper van, my adventure wagon, but my children had been slower to warm-up to it, probably because I called it mine versus ours from the beginning. I knew it might be a way in for K to fall in love with the van, (not really the van but the opportunities she provides), like I had.

K had a strong opinion about where to go for our initial fishing gear shopping trip. And so that’s how we landed at a massive Cabela’s in Thorton, about 40 minutes from home. The amount of taxidermy in the store is wild, and we joked that a spin off of Night at the Museum, called Night at Cabela’s could have great entertainment potential. In the fishing section, we met Jim, a short, white-haired man, dressed in all khaki, with metal-rimmed glasses, who knew exactly the supply we needed for reel and spin fishing. Shiny metal spinning lures. Rooster tails. Powerbait and salmon eggs. How to rig a rod for bait fishing versus lure fishing. How to use a fly on a spinner rod. What kind of fish swim in the lakes we were planning to visit this summer and the best ways to catch them. Jim was kind and a wealth of information, and when we parted ways with all of our swag in a fishing net slung over K’s shoulder, he said, “You’re lucky. You’ve got a mom who will take you fishing.”

Maybe K feels lucky. I’m not sure. Maybe he will someday. Regardless, I’ve always appreciated the parts of myself that buck against the patriarchy by bending traditional gender roles. Being one of two women in our town to coach Little League for three years. Taking my solo hikes, even in the dead of winter. Womaning the grill and camping so often my process is a well-oiled one. I was excited to don a trucker hat and cutoffs to go fishing with my kid.

The road opened up in front of us as we drove the short distance toward Golden Gate State Park’s Kriley pond to test our luck at some trout fishing for a two-day stay. Sitting beside one another on camp chairs plunked on the side of the pond, K’s hands tied a knot we’d learned on YouTube. 7 times over the line, through the eyelet, wet the line with spit, and pull hard. I’ve stopped trying to remember its name. Cinch, I think. Fishing line is slippery and translucent, making the knot-tying not really a cinch at all, but K caught on fast, as he does many things in this skill arena.

The first lure yielded no fish, not even a bite, nothing. We switched to fluorescent pink Powerbait that smells synthetically fishy but agreed it felt like a bribe. Changing the rod setup was a chore, but it had a pulse to it, that energy of anticipation of a code about to crack. If we could just find the lure the fish would pay attention to…

We broke lines, lost lures, fumbled in our bulky gloves to use a hemostat properly when we caught the two fish we reeled in that evening. The first one I couldn't save; the hook had gone too deep, and I worked at it too long, too clumsy. Stricken, I said a prayer for the fish then left it in the meadow grass for another animal’s sustenance. In that moment, I knew if I kept fishing I'd have to learn proper release.

We stayed for many hours that first night, doing things novice fishers do, each of us catching one rainbow trout and finally giving in to the dark. Back at the campsite, I stood by as sous chef on the asparagus as K, in his headlamp, grilled two filets to a perfect medium on the cast iron, basting them with his homemade chive butter he’d prepped at home the day before. We ate them drenched in pools of A1 on blue plastic plates sitting side by side in the van’s backseat.

That night I dreamed of the fish in the meadow, still there, facing me. I woke with a tightness in my belly. A foreboding sense that perhaps we should hit a pause button on this hobby until Mama could get her shit together.

But the first thing K said when he woke was, “I can’t wait to fish again tonight.”

In the daylight, the campsite was familiar. It was the spot my former partner and I had taken the kids for years, the first weekend of every summer, a kind of tradition. When I asked K if he remembered it, he said, "Sort of." I've often wondered how much of the loss I carry is mine, and how much of it belongs to my kids. K sometimes recalls memories that are meshed with others. A place mismatched with a situation. The wrong people present for a real moment in time. Memory is strange that way.

K was the first to ditch the gloves on the second night. “We need to wet our hands because the fish have a protective layer,” he told me. “I’ll do the releases.” Agreeing that lure fishing was just more fun compared to using bait, we tried several spinners out. Finally, one caught their attention, and it was gold and yellow with red polka dots, small, spinning underwater, and stealing fragments of light from the setting sun.

We went from nothing to a fish every few casts, like we’d found the password.

K knelt at the water’s edge, hands already wet before the fish even cleared the surface, and worked the hook free in seconds, no fumbling this time, no hemostat, just his bare fingers moving with a swift and gentle approach. He’d hold each one under the surface for a second before letting go, its silver scales glimmering, like he was giving it a moment to remember. Maybe there was some benefit to those screen time minutes I’d added on YouTube that morning, but tutorials can only go so far. K had an intuition that was undeniable.

We photographed the first few, cheered, high-fived. If one of us caught one, the other ran to assist with the net. Twelve trout, by the time the sky was orange against the tree line then blue, pink, purple. And this night, every fish swam off the way they’d come.

Later, after a salmon dinner we pretended was a fish we caught, we laid in bed marveling at our success before turning on Bruce Almighty on my laptop, the perks of van Wifi. A nearby fisher at the pond that night asked us what we were fishing with. Unwarranted but satisfying flattery. I gave him one of the lures of which I had a few in my tackle box. As he departed with many thanks, he looked at K and said, “You were a fish factory tonight!”

The way my kid smiled…

Writing this now, I looked up the spiritual meaning of fish. Abundance. Renewal. It’s almost too convenient. But finding ways in with K has felt like its own kind of code cracking, learning what makes him laugh, what motivates him, what causes him to withdraw or open up, where his trust starts and where it's still being built.

Dear Readers,

This fall, I’m co-facilitating Embodied Alchemy: Weaving Collective Wisdom and Writing, a women’s writing circle for anyone moving through their own version of a life transition, a becoming, a season that refuses to resolve neatly. It’s a space to write what’s true instead of what’s been scripted, and to explore feelings that sometimes seem to contradict each other without needing to reconcile them.

We’re starting local, with five monthly Sunday sessions here in Boulder beginning in October, and we’d love to have you. If you feel called, or know someone who might be interested, send me a message, and I’ll share more details. <3

With gratitude,

Keri