He was a dad scoring a victory outdoors, whether he knew it or not.
My son and I spent the evening of opening day of trout season on the edge of a local lake. It’s little more than a pond really, just one piece of a local park that exists to let people walk, picnic, play horseshoes, and, yes, fish, all in equal measure.
It’s not our favorite place, and fishing there from the bank, surrounded by lots of other fishermen, is not our favorite way to cast a line.
But with limited time, it was a place close to home where we could go for two hours and have some fun.
Down shore from us, on my right, another father was fishing with his young son. The boy was maybe 10, I’d guess. They had two trout between them when we got there and we watched them catch two more.
It was their fifth and final fish that was remarkable, though.
Another rainbow trout, it was neither bigger than average nor bigger than any of the others they had.
But the dad, after hooking it, passed the rod to an older son who had just showed up on the scene.
He’d been fishing elsewhere on the lake. Why? Teenage impatience, perhaps, mixed with a desire to strike out and do things on his own, as is the way of young men.
Whatever, he brought no fish with him.
Dad said something as he handed him the rod with a smile and, I could almost imagine, a wink. I didn’t hear what it was.
But we found out soon enough.
The older son reeled the fish in. Dad put it on the stringer. And with that, he and the younger son left.
Another teen, a friend of the older boy, showed up about the same time, rod, tackle box and net in hand. He was clearly inexperienced, but enthusiastic, too.
Right away, he asked the first boy – the son – if he’d had any luck.
“Well,” I overheard him say, with a sheepish smile, “my dad hooked one and let me reel it in. He told me he wanted to make sure I knew what it felt like.”
The boys both laughed in the way that sons do – out of sight of their parents, of course — when their dad has gotten them with a good-natured zinger.
The same thing happens countless times each year on lakeshores, in midstream, in hunting camps and similar places. Some of those verbal darts become the stuff of tales told year after year.
Others, as will probably prove to be the case with this one, are forgotten quickly.
What remains, though, are the legacy of such stolen moments.
Shared times outside between fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and children – stolen in the sense that they’re ripped from the clutch of everyday life’s commitments and pressures – go into a bank of sorts. They accumulate over time, earning interest.
Later, the sum of all those moments forms the bonds that link generations together.
That’s a lot to expect from one hatchery-raised fish, I know.
But not every victory comes with a checkered flag and not every victory gets marked with a shiny trophy.
Sometimes, it’s the almost unnoticed moments that count most.
