"She's got that big-eyed primal look," Pili told Nick. "I don't think she wants to stop."
It was almost midnight and as I stood on the edge of the water where the Kenai River meets the Atlantic, I could hear Olive screaming from from the tent. Elias sat by the fire, having crawled out of the tent an hour ago, over-tired but too curious to sleep. I knew Olive would settle easier if I took off my waders and climbed in the tent with her.
But I was catching fish.
Red Salmon that shimmered silver in the dusk. Big ones that hit my net hard and fought to escape as I muscled the net over and dragged them to shore. They flopped on the beach as I silently thanked them, before bonking them on the head with two hard strikes.
"One to stun and one to kill," TJ said. On the biggest ones, I sometimes needed a third or fourth hit to stop them from flopping in the net as I bent down to untangle them.
Primal instincts pulled at my core like two tides, one outgoing and one coming in-- I felt compelled to return to my children, as their comforter in the night, but I also embraced the role of provider, catching salmon as the half moon rose.
Nick is up there, I thought, when another nine-pound fish struck and my adrenaline spiked as I fought to turn the five-foot net over against the tide. The thrill of seeing the fish jump, of successfully landing it on the beach. The knowledge of wild Alaskan salmon stocked in your freezer all winter long.
One more. I'll just catch one more....
Reni, who like me, fully caught the fishing bug on this trip, walked back into the water with her ten-foot pole. "Nick and Gavin don't want us to catch anymore fish," she said, referring to her father by his first name, seeming more and more like a peer than an eleven-year-old girl. "Every fish we catch is one more they have to clean."
"Right," I smiled. "One more and I'm done."
"Me too," she said as she maneuvered her net into the water like a pro.
Earlier in the evening, we caught a fish together as our nets tangled underwater when the salmon swam my net into hers. She took the lead in untangling the smaller female and as I stood by watching her unwind the net from the fish's fins I had to restrain myself from helping. And I realized she will only grow more competent, more independent, more able.
All our children will, even the baby bird newborns who seem so helpless with their eyes still closed, mouths searching, they too shall grow.
And so shall our children with injured brains and miles between stones, they too will grow more competent, more independent, more able.
As the earth slowly rotates, we evolve, whether we are ready to or not.
Ahh Right, I thought, as stood next to Reni, chest-deep in the ocean, jumping waves like I did as a child on the Cape, we got to clean all these fish, tonight, so they can fit in our coolers. Shoot..
Another hit, my eighth of the night, and I dragged it to shore as Nick walked down the beach to meet me.
"I need to go to bed," he said, his hood up and shoulders heavy.
"I know. Are the kids finally down?"
"Yeah, Gavin got Elias down and Olive fought it but finally conked out too."
"Thank you, Babe. I can deal with the fish," I heard myself saying, the girl who could practically cut her pinkie off with a butter knife. "I can have your Dad or Gavin show me how."
(Nick's Dad, a true die-hard, continued to fish until 1:00 a.m. with me, but he had also woken up at 5:00 and fished the early morning shift with the boys.)
"Good," Nick said, "You can do it."
And for once, I felt like I could. Like I could do it all.
Anything.
As Nick and I talked, Gavin set up a fillet station in his sled to clean Reni and his wife Pili's fish. I pulled my orange sled alongside his and asked if he'd show me how to head, tail, and gut my fish.
Gavin is a good teacher, clear and patient, a seasoned outdoor guide; with headlamps on, we work crouched down on the beach, facing each other. His fish clean and precise. Mine bloody and ragged but cut.
Our friend Hilary, born and raised in Alaska, joined us and offered to help cut some of my fish. "Next time after you catch them you may want to cut open their gills so they bleed out," she said. And I finally understood why this step mattered, compared to Gavin and Bruce's tidy work stations, my sled and the cooler top that Hillary worked on looked like massacre scenes. The blood coagulated quickly and smeared instead of washing off.
It was almost two a.m. and I felt more awake than I had in years. Alive and full of my own blood, blood from my ancestors, passed down to my children, blood that allows us to do crazy and beautiful things like hold a net in the edge of the Pacific and wait for a salmon to find it.
To create children who test you and break you and remake you a thousand times a day but try as you might you can never catch them in your net, never keep them still, they swim on to underwater playgrounds you'll never see, following their own blood down uncharted streams.
Bound and free.
During our three days on the beach, Nick and I caught 49 fish as Olive ate sand and Elias walked among the fisherman with a cane in one hand and a "bonker" in the other. They took turns holding a smaller net by the water's edge, skirting waves, and getting wet.
Someday, it will be their turn to provide.
And though it's not clear to me now what this role will look like for Elias, the world will continue to rotate, and all I can do is circle this life along with him. Hold out a hand when he needs one and refrain from reaching out when he can do it himself.
And learn to forgive myself when I confuse the two.
OOH Christy glad I checked in to see if you had posted today! This is a stunner. You've done an amazing job of conveying all that is messy, uncomfortable, a little scary, but yet also exhilarating about raising kids and being in nature. Loved it!!!
Posted by: Kate | 07/26/2011 at 03:08 PM
So beautiful, Christy! Thanks for these words & thoughts & pictures. But I wish you hadn't veered into fiction. There is NO WAY Reni can be 11 years old! :3)
Posted by: Ginna | 07/26/2011 at 03:10 PM
Wow! Very beautiful! Your writing is amazing!
Posted by: Stacey | 07/26/2011 at 03:59 PM
This is beautiful Christy. Just lovely.
Posted by: Sara | 07/26/2011 at 07:06 PM
What a great insight into a place and activity I won't be able to experience or even knew of really. What great insight into the feelings of parenting that I know very much about. I have to do a lot of forgiving too, and less projection of an uncertain future because it is just too scary sometimes. As always, thank you, I always get a thrill when I see a new post.
Posted by: Kimberly | 07/27/2011 at 07:29 PM
amazing fish and even more amazing words. That is the first time I've felt calm in days. See, we met with some educational "testers" the other day and our 8 year old is still reading at the first grade level. He may not have canes like Elias but he struggles all the same. Dyslexia and ADHD are spectrums just like all others but they beg the same question," how can I make it easier for him? " so thank you for your beautiful thoughts. I wish I had been feeling the tug of the net too.
Posted by: fleming | 07/28/2011 at 05:59 PM
Sorry for the late reply to your wonderful comments. Our computer died last week and we had a few days of thinking we lost everything, pictures, writing, etc b/c we couldn't access our back up either. We are slowly finding our files but its still a giant pain in the ass. Anyways, i'm back online now and Flem I'm sending you a huge hug. I'm not looking forward to the return of school (mid-August here) so that Elias can be tested and compared again instead of just an outside kid exploring the world. I wish we lived closer so we could take walks and drink wine and vent to each other anytime
Thank you Kimberly and Kate for letting me know you relate to the parenting side of this post and that you enjoyed the fishing story too. Thank you Sara and Stacey for your kind words and Ginna, non-fiction: Reni will be in 6th grade this fall. I know, I cant believe it either...miss you!
Posted by: Christy | 07/31/2011 at 08:24 AM
Christy, it is hard to get my head around the visual of you putting those fish to rest! Sounds like an amazing time - I am trying to imagine the smell of the tent, the clothes, the sleeping bags at the end of a trip like this. You guys must really, really love Salmon! : ) Also trying to imagine how my kids would ever sleep on such a trip. Kudos to you guys on all fronts! That freezer looks absolutely beautiful!!
Posted by: Anno | 07/31/2011 at 04:45 PM