Fishing with My Sons: Lumpsuckers, Storms+Giving Up

Today it is blowing westerly 45 knots, and no one can get to the nets. All day yesterday, it rained and blew so hard, my two sons and their crew (Yay, Peter and Josh!) were forced to do the unthinkable---they donned the duckbills. 

It takes a lot to push them there . .. but even arrayed so smartly, they returned soaked through their rain gear.

In these first 14 days of our (commercial) salmon fishing season it has blown and stormed all but one.  That one day, I decided to go out in the skiff on the last pick with two of my sons, Elisha, 18 and Micah, 11.  It was going to be a gentle evening together bonding in our raingear over the ocean, kelp, fish gurry, all laced with conversation, laughter, work, or course, and occasional stops for photo sessions----a decided luxury in the work-hard realm of fishing. All was well. We retrieved a pouty lumpsucker, and posed for portraits before freeing him back to the depths.

I worked beside Micah, marveling again at the beauty of the salmon, how gorgeous the night sky on the water . . . 

But as we moved progressively down our island, the wind picked up. The skiff began to pitch. The nets got dirty, full of kelp and began to twist and roll. The lines were tight and hard to lift. I put the camera away. We stopped talking.

Soon it was all hands on deck.  Just grabbing lines, holding the net in a pitching skiff with a slimy kelp-covered floor, picking fish when you can barely keep your footing ….. taking waves over the boat, all that. After awhile, my arms turned to rubber, my hands wouldn’t work. I wasn’t enough help for Elisha. By the end of the night, I made a decision. I wouldn’t go out and work in storms any more.  I’m going to give up on that. I’m going to lay that down. I’m going to be thankful for my age, for the wisdom to say, “No more.” Or---not much more--of that.

This is a season of giving up for me. I've written too much already about giving up on waiting for love and acceptance that now will never come. There's more. I am  giving up on being the size and shape I would rather be. I'm giving up on some other life I might have had . . . 

"Giving up" sounds like surrender, but look, here is what giving up looked like yesterday:

If you're a seine boat, you give up on your anchorage behind our island and find better shelter elsewhere: 

When the storms won’t quit and the boats will hardly float, you give up and come in from the storm. 

You give up and come ashore to curl up with cards and popcorn, while the wind lashes the sea and it doesn't matter, because you're warm and dry and playing a game that is now your favorite.

And in the midst of all this luscious giving-up, one person slipped out of the warm house into the wind-howling night, climbed on to his horse and showed us yet one more way of giving up:

Three times around, Captain Storm Rider blazed across the island, his cape aflame.

And the next day, in the storm-that-would-not-end, yet another way of giving up:

I watch and learn. 

The storm that slams the door, beaches the skiffs, also opens the window, lifts the curtains, makes room for the card game, the popcorn, the comfort of one another. 

And, when we venture outside again, that wind, caught in sleeping bags, parachutes, and fuschia capes, lifts us higher, giving us new ways to ride the storm.  

Lay it down, dear brothers and sisters, what you can't carry anymore. Maybe it's time to come in from the storm. Maybe it's time to rest and play. Maybe it's time to stop being a hero. You don't have to try and take God's place. You're not the only one. And if you have the strength, go ahead and do it. Retrieve that pink tablecloth, tie it around your shoulders and go blaze about your own windy island. Put that storm to good use. Sometimes it launches us.