Grandpas

Home tonight alone, mid-week, while Meg is attending a class on breastfeeding. Tonight we divided and conquered. Meg is taking care of family needs and I am taking care of the homestead. We purchased new flooring recently, which we are planning to install on Friday (hey, it’s Good Friday). And I stayed home tonight to do the prep work, filling cracks and leveling the floor.

It’s spring in Minnesota. Though we still have what seems like 2’ of snow in the yard, I noticed some green sprouts in the garden. Spring brings with it the need for house projects. And so it is with us. I developed a nice long list of house projects to bring us firmly into September. In order to knock a few off before jr. arrives, we’re starting in the kitchen – redoing the floor and adding some cupboards and shelving (thank you, silvercocoon, for your design help!)

So I dug out the seam in the old sheet vinyl, mudded therein, and smoothed it out professionally. A quick clean up and another Summit and I’m good to go. Time to pull out the tackle boxes and look at stuff. It’s what I do when I’m alone these days.

Nights like this, it feels like the whole world is in spring thaw. Green things growing up everywhere. I open my old tackle boxes at the kitchen table, one inherited from my father’s father, and the other from my mother’s father. They smell like old leather, decaying rubber, and moist paper. I like to look at them as much as I like to use the contents to catch fish.

I think about my grandfathers. I never really knew either one of them. My father’s father passed away when I was in middle school. My mother’s father is still alive, sharp as a crappie fin and full of memories, but hard to get to know. So I gather what stories I can, and I get to know them through the details in these tackle boxes.

I find something new every time I look. A perfection loop tied years ago on brittle leader material, a home-made spinner rig, a sharpening stone from the “Ontario Department of Lands and Forests” in a nice leather case, ancient fly line with the price still on it: $4.39. I like to think about where they were when they last used this gear, and what northern Minnesota must have looked like back then.

I like to think about men turning into fathers. And fathers becoming grandfathers. I like to think about what I’ll pass on to my child, and my child’s child. Hopefully more than fishing tackle. Hopefully stories about the way Minnesota was when I was a child, the lakes I paddled with the woman who became my wife, and the fish I caught.