Month: December 2020

Having harbored two sons in the waters of her womb, my mother considers herself something of an authority on human foetuses. The normal foetus, she says, is no swimmer; it is not a fish-, seal-, eel-, or even turtlelike: it is an awkward alien in the liquid environment – a groping land creature confused by its immersion and anxious to escape. My brother, she says, was such a foetus. I was not. My swimming style was humanoid butterfly-, crawl-, back-, or breaststroke: mine were the sure, swift dartings of a deformed but hefty trout at home with the water, finning and hovering in its warm black pool.

The River Why, David James Duncan

My mother never really fished. I recall one story from the days when she was dating my father when they took a day trip to fish for cod but I’ve never seen her with rod in hand – not even a picture. No, she was not a fisher, but she brought me into this world, on a dark and stormy night in early March – the month of the sign of Pisces. She let me emerge from a warm pool that kept me safe and formed who I am today.

At a young age I was already wading a nearby brook catching all the squirmy things I could with my hands and a bucket, returning home wet and dirty but all smiles. On trips to the shore, it was sandy seashells and jellyfish that my mother allowed in the bathtub of our motel room, despite the protests from dad. She always put fishy things under the Christmas tree. And when I ventured forth as a boy to test the waters with rod in hand, she ensured I was dressed for the weather, properly stuffed with a hearty breakfast, and drove me to all the places I wanted to fish – the Saddle River, Wood Dale Pond, the Woodcliff Lake Reservoir and countless others places in suburban New Jersey.

Then I went out into the world and fishing expanded for me. I fished big rivers, water that went on to the horizon, places beyond my little land of upbringing, places where the little hands and buckets and zebcos of my youth would never have been enough. But always I would return to my mother and father – holidays, birthdays, Mother’s and Father’s Days, and on some occasions just to visit and fish Barnegat Bay, where my parents retired. Even then, my mother was up early to make breakfast, prepare a lunch, and cook or help cook whatever I caught. Every time I visited them, there was a copy of the local fishing paper waiting for me along with clippings of fishing reports from the Asbury Park Press.

Now, some 60 plus years since I emerged from her, I am still at home with the water, but sadly, my mother has passed. There are no more fishing papers waiting for me when I visit, and the house, attended by aides for my ailing father, is just not the same. It is not home as I knew it and I loved it.

Down deep, that pool of life – the very one that nourished me and kept me safe before – has ebbed, but a flood tide of love, the same one that brought me to my watery world, still runs strong in my heart.

I remember it when I fly fish the bay. The moon and the earth do their thing and as sure as fall sets leaves on fire, the water turns, from the emptying as life does for us all, to the flooding, the filling, and the rising tide that brings life back to the bay. That is when I remember Mom. She always flooded my very being, my heart, even now…

I miss you Mom…