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He animated the short speech with both hands and turned up the volume on his words. My favorite eight-year-old looked at me exasperated, with his signature furrowed brow and troubled eyes. I perked up and turned toward the small raspy voice of my seven year old son. We need bigger hooks too, because these ones are too small.” “Hey Dad, when we’re at the beach, we have to buy squid and bunker. We were casting bobbers into a pond with spinning tackle when Aiden first brought it up back in June.
STUCK IN THE MIDDLE AIDEN HOW TO
And once they knew we were traveling to LBI, New Jersey for vacation, they looked into where to fish, what to fish and how to catch the biggest fish in the sea. I’m a researcher at heart, and I want those answers.īut my two boys are old enough now to be researchers themselves. And without returning for a follow up experience, the questions remain frustratingly unanswered. A short run with something leaves too many questions wandering around and bumping against each other in my brain. Sure, I found the prospect of hauling fish from the surf intriguing, but I suppose I’d always stopped at the reality checkpoint - I live five hours from the ocean, so how often can I really fish water with tides? And while most people enjoy dabbling in things once in awhile, that approach is really not my bag. I’d been to LBI at least a dozen times but never cast a line into the salt. What can we see today? What will we find? Those are the questions to focus on more, rather than, How many will we catch?. I explained that, from the beginning, Going fishing with these kids was less about catching trout and more about taking an adventure together. I think they both started casting fly rods around five, but they cast spinning rods a little earlier.” how many years have they been fishing?” He asked again. When Aiden turned downstream to hold up a new prize, and when Joey yelled down that he just missed one, the stranger and I waved back and replied with a big thumbs up. He told me stories about his childhood in Connecticut, of rivers and rope swings and cheap fishing gear. We watched my sons and chatted for a while. I waded downstream and stopped under the walking bridge to visit with the stranger. The sun-drenched day was warm enough for wet wading, and the boys had been out with me for about an hour. As Joey fished some thin pocket water in the shade, Aiden searched the shallows for anything unusual to add to his daily rock collection. The old man leaned over the wooden railing of the walking bridge and gestured toward my sons who were wading upstream. “How long have they been fishing with you?” he hollered. We walked a lot, road bikes, explored the island, spent loads of time on the beach. They discovered routines that suited each of them. The boys found their own avenues of enjoyment. We took a vacation the way it’s supposed to be. No Little League games, no school, no work or business calls. I think we all sunk in and relaxed in a way that we hadn’t for a long time. Having that kind of space and such comforts changes things. And it was immediately clear that this house, with a huge kitchen and bedrooms to spare, with its endless decks and terraces, would be the feature of the week. This year, when we raised the garage door of our new beach home for the week, the boys flew up four flights of stairs.
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Wishing too hard for a perfect repeat might get in the way of enjoying the new moments - the unexpected things. The sequel to last summer, I assured them, would host its own wonders. That’s what I told the boys as we prepared for this year’s family beach vacation.