“What could I sing for one who was there as I painfully grew from a child into a man?”
Peter Himmelman
The winter storm moaned through the ancient white pine that guards our home, and wind-driven snow swirled under the eaves of the studio. It was a wild night, and when the building shuddered, I reflexively looked toward the house where Lisa and Tommy slept. The reflection of my face in the windowpane and the blinding squall beyond were all I saw.
The blizzard blew itself out as the new day arrived, and within an hour the sky was swept clear. The full moon traveled high in a cobalt heaven, and cast strange, fantastical shadows on the new-fallen snow. I was pondering how the scene might be painted when the phone rang.
Few phone calls after midnight bring welcomed news, and I was relieved to see that it wasn’t from my seventeen-year-old son. I was terrified, however, to see that it was my parents. “Hello?” I answered.
“Hi Bob,” my father said. “How’s it going?”
“Is everything all right?” I asked in a panic. “How’s mom?”
“I was on your website and saw that you have space available for your week in Argentina.”
“Yeah?” I said. “How’s mom?”
“Oh, she’s asleep, it’s late.”
“I know it’s late, what’s up?”
“I’d like to go fishing with you.”
The request, like the phone call had come out of the blue. “Sure,” I said, “We’ll make it happen.”
Hosting a large group of fishermen is an enormous undertaking, and even though Lisa and I work together, finding enough time for our fishermen, and my father seemed unlikely. I suggested to him that we travel in advance of the group, and spend the time together, just the two of us. The dates were set, and we hung up. The moon set as I walked across the yard to home and bed.
In those few moments before sleep, I thought about all the times my father and I had fished together when I was a boy, neither of us realizing how much those lazy afternoons would influence and shape my future. I fell asleep content that I might return a small part of the favor.
Dawn always casts a clean and honest light upon the notions I fall asleep with, and I found my excitement about the trip tempered by the reality that, while my father and I have a good relationship, my role within it had failed to evolve past adolescence. “It only takes a day or two,” I told Lisa over breakfast, “before I begin acting like a twelve-year-old. I don’t want to mess this up.”
“You’ll do fine.” She said. “Just enjoy yourself… and be patient.”
The weeks rushed by, as they’re apt to do over the holidays, and suddenly the trip was at hand. We met at an airport somewhere along the way, and awoke the next morning as the plane began its descent into Buenos Aires.
The afternoon found us at a sidewalk café across from the Plaza San Martin, enjoying empanadas and tall, dark, thick-glassed bottles of beer, served on ice, in champagne buckets.
After a stroll around the plaza, and a long nap, we walked to my favorite parrilla for dinner. “This steak is as big as a catcher’s mitt!” My father gasped as the bife chorizo landed solidly on the table in front of him. “Pour me another glass of wine, would you?”
Sleep came easily, and in the morning we were on our way to San Carlos De Bariloche, and eventually San Huberto where we’d stay. My father arrived exhausted… but ready to fish.
We drove in silence as the pick-up truck wound its way through the ranch, tracing the Malleo River upstream toward Chile, and one of my favorite pools. As we twisted and turned along the dusty road my father’s gaze never left the volcano, which dominates the landscape. “What’s it called?” He finally asked.
“The Lanin,” I answered. “It means ‘the dead one’ to the local people.”
“Wherever we go”, he said, his gaze never wavering, “It always seems to be with us.”
We arrived at the river, and as we walked down to the pool my father held out his hand. “We haven’t fished together in a few years, and my balance isn’t what it used to be,” he said. “Would you help me?”
“Of course.” I answered.
As we waded into the river, the arm around my shoulder tightened and his eyes met mine. “I’m going to need your help now and then.”
“Count on it.” I told him.
His first cast faltered and fell short, and I wondered if he’d waited too long to try and recapture what he sought. As he made his second cast, a small sleek bird appeared from nowhere, dove out of the sun and towered over the pool. When it soared overhead I saw that it was a sparrow hawk. As it hovered there, watching us, a feeling of wellbeing swept over me; I knew that my father would find his prize.
“I’ve got one!” He said, as the trout leapt clear of the pool. “It’s a good fish!”
He hooked and landed a number of trout that first evening, one of them a sturdy eighteen-inch rainbow. After the customary photos, he smiled and said, “Hey, this is fun!”
“No kidding.” I deadpanned.
“Where’s the next one?” He asked.
I thought it was my turn.
As if on cue, another fish began to feed. “I see ‘m!” He said, stepping past me to make the cast.
What have I done? I thought. I’ll never get to fish!
My father’s cast was perfect and the line tightened. He’d hooked another good fish, and whatever disappointment I felt was softened in the low evening light that warmed us and turned everything to gold. Dusk slowly crept down the mountains in shades of ultramarine, and eventually we stood together in the shadow of Lanin.
It was there, in the cool shade of the volcano, that I noticed he’d grown smaller, like a young boy in over-sized waders, and realized that I had become his guide. He seemed comfortable with this role reversal, perhaps even relieved and grateful for it.
All father-son relationships begin at birth, and eventually they end, but few are given the opportunity for redemption. It seems to me that how this story ends isn’t nearly as important as how it began again.
