Fly fishing

It’s a odd sport if you think about it.

Throw a line into the water. Hit just the right spot, if you can. That one over there – where the rocks make the water ripple and bubbles are forming. It looks like fish would want to spend their morning there, don’t you think? 

Maybe I’m wrong.

Try again. And again, lazily thinking about nothing other than the rhythm of the flick, of ten and two, of Norman MacClean and the exact shape that the water takes while flowing over that rock.

You could think about the rock and the water for the next hour, even though you have no words to describe it.

Swish, flick. Try that spot again, the one that fish probably like.

Be a little surprised when the line actually tugs. 

Take the fish out of the water. Consider the length, the color. 

That’s all. Throw it back.

We all know what lies beneath the rivers that flow around us. Rocks, moss, broken beer bottles, and brook trout. And yet curiosity compels us to look, to dip behind the silver veil trickling down and spy on another life.

I am pregnant with our third child, and the anxiety that is as much a pregnancy symptom as nausea and swollen ankles has begun to creep in.

How will we balance three children, when two seems like more than enough? Will the baby be okay, healthy, happy?  How will this work? How will we manage? The time, the money, the love.

When the first two were born, we didn’t take them fly fishing. We hiked for miles past rivers, but left the rods at home. I know several families who hoisted baby into carrier, and lulled them to sleep with the swish and flick of the ten and two. My husband has a hook firmly lodged into the back of his fishing vest. No amount of tugging and pulling has freed it over the past several years. I forbade him from fishing with children near by.

Now, they are old enough to hold their own poles. They stand along the banks, one with a toy fishing pole, the other with his child sized pole sporting a bobber and real hook. Their fun is not diminished by their lack of fish.

I haven’t laid my hands on a fishing rod since my oldest was born. I miss the silence, the thinking about nothing other than the way the water curves over a rock. But I never truly learned how to fish. My husband tied my lures and untangled my lines and freed my fish for me. I only contributed the swish and flick. He told my I was good at it. 

I think he just wanted to go fishing more.

Now, with a third on the way, I assume it will be years more until I go fishing again. 

But still, the urge is there. To take a peek at what is under the water. To see a different life. 

I suppose it is that same illogical, irrepressible urge that compelled a third child into our lives. A desire to see what another life would be like, a life with one more person to love.

Knee deep in water. Staring at that one rock, and the way the water flows over it. It’s riveting, though you can’t say why.

No words to describe it.