Boyhood Revisited

Whitecaps on Christmas Bay? Unthinkable. Those glassy waters are not used to such turbulent wind, and nor was I.

And so, I learned…

Boy, were these two fishermen in for a wild time Saturday morning. We left the house at 5:30 am to make our way down to Freeport, Texas to fish the salt, my first time on a fly. Listening to AC/DC while discussing politics and religion, a truly healthy mixture, Ray and I caught up as we prepared to catch...but what lay ahead?

There’s something to be said for the time men spend together. In this case, two fathers taking advantage of the few early-morning moments afforded them to do those things considered right for those considered men. I have to say, and Sarah would attest, I’d wake up early any day to do these things…to spend this time living out my boyhood.

Does a man’s boyhood ever end? Call me Peter Pan. I was once asked about my pastimes. My apt reply was this:

“I don’t have pastimes. I only have good times, which make my life pass with the greatest enjoyment and benefit.”

And rekindling my boyhood, those cherished moments of rejuvenation easily snuffed out by our most serious reality, called adult life, is what brings me the greatest joy, the most beneficial reward. It’s my boyhood that engages and makes fruitful the dynamism of my manhood, my fatherhood. It keeps me young at heart, ready to take on the most grave with the simplest. Boyhood is sonship revivified...actualized within the scope of my essence, to be the man, the father, the husband.

Despite our efforts to fight the wind, and its effort to fight our fly lines, we ended the morning with no fish caught. However the wind was fought and fly lines continued to land straight along the path of feisty water. A bit like life, don’t you think? We caught a good time, arguably a great time, a time well remembered, captured…

As my ever-so sagacious brother-in-law recently noted, “Even when you set out to do one thing, and it miserably fails, you somehow end up with something else that completely works.”

Wading, casting, striping in a line well fought...such are the makings of a life well lived.

And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, (Mk. 6:48)

Picture: John Everett Millais' The Boyhood of Raleigh 1869-70