My birthday is this week, and for me, birthdays always bring about the memory of a special tradition my father and I had to celebrate my birthdays. Every year, on or near my birthday, Dad would take me fishing, just he and I. When I was young I was usually just given a baited cane pole with a bobber to watch and I think my catch was often just tiny sunfish that we ended up throwing back into the water. Dad, of course, had the rod and reel and spent his time casting and trying out different lures from his tackle box, while I watched. I didn’t really care if we caught anything since I couldn’t stand the taste or smell of fish. When I was a bit older he gave me a new fishing pole that I could cast with. It was one of those “new” Zebco’s with the casting button and a supposed tangle-free enclosed reel.
If you have fished, you might understand that fishing, for most people, isn’t necessarily about catching fish. Fishing is quiet. It is meditative. You don’t need to talk much. It is almost spiritual. For Dad and I it was just about being together. As I got older, the birthday fishing trip expanded to include alternate outdoor activities, like hiking. A popular destination for us was Bernheim Forest, just south of Louisville, KY.
One year Dad gave me a small telescope for my birthday, in preparation for a backpacking trip we were planning. I was about 10 that summer when we spent two days hiking along the Little Shepherd Trail in Eastern Kentucky. Much of the fun was preparing for the trip and buying all the gear. My dad was big on gear. We had red plastic ponchos that snapped together to form a little pup tent, simple framed backpacks, and no-melt Hershey bars like the type he was given in the South Pacific during the war.
By the time I was a teen and busy with other things, the birthday “fishing trips” were abandoned. I was busy with friends and Dad was busy getting his new business off the ground. But, by my first year in college I was eager to recreate our outdoor time together. We began to plan another backpacking trip. On my visits home from college that year we shopped for our new gear. We got new backpacks, new boots, and lighter weight sleeping bags. We still stuck with the old red ponchos as nothing surpassed their multi-use function as rain gear and tent. We bought a little Sterno stove for cooking.
My brothers told me it was crazy to take Dad on such a trip. He was overweight, had high blood pressure and was pre-diabetic. “He’ll have a heart attack”, they said. I wasn’t going to back down, if Dad was willing to give it a try, we were going! I was young and optimistic.
Early that summer we set out for our big trip to Red River Gorge in Kentucky. We had planned to take a series of trails that would provide a two-day loop back to our starting point. It was beautiful and like the fishing trip, we didn’t even need to talk. The important thing was that we had both taken this time to be together again in the outdoors. Dad appreciated nature and enjoyed identifying the plants and birds along our travels. He once told me that he had wanted to be a park ranger.
But, there was no getting around the fact that Dad was slower and the hiking was more difficult than it had been for him on that first backpacking venture almost 10 years previous. After the first night out, we decided to cut the trip short and spend the second night in the lodge at the state park nearby. It didn’t matter and I wasn’t disappointed. We had accomplished the goal. Alfred Hitchcock always talked about the MacGuffin, which was the thing you thought the movie was about when in fact the “real story” was actually something else. The real story about our trips was not how many fish we caught or how many miles we hiked, those were the MacGuffins. The real story was about a father and his daughter being together.
It never occurred to me to wonder how this birthday tradition had started, until years after my father’s death. My great aunt asked me one day if I knew why Dad had always taken me fishing on my birthday. I didn’t. She then told me the story of a time when I was only about 3 or 4 years old and I was asked what I wanted for my birthday. Apparently, I replied that all I wanted was to go fishing with my Dad. You see, I was the youngest of five children. I understand now that my father must have been profoundly touched by my simple and innocent childhood request for more time with him. Sometimes we forget how precious our time is to those around us. In many respects it is the most valuable and lasting thing we have to give to the ones we love. Those outdoors adventures with my Dad are treasures that continue to feed and nurture me to this day, and I am grateful for his enduring birthday gift. Somehow it seems fitting that the last time I saw my Dad, just weeks before his death at age 57, was at Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee. Doug and I had met him there to see the Bald and Golden Eagles that nest and winter there.
-Mary
On the Little Shepherd Trail 1969
Bernheim Forest Hike
What a lovely memory of a tradition celebrating your birthday. Very well written.
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