Crossing the Border St. bridge, I looked out over Cohasset Harbor. Someone was fishing the whitewater where the tide was running out over the rocks into the harbor. When I got safely across the bridge, I stopped to look, and saw that he was using a fly rod. Mostly I see people using bait and spinning gear. This is the first time I’ve seen someone fly fishing in Cohasset Harbor.
The thought that immediately came into my head was that I’d have to tell Dad about this next time we talked. I gave my head a figurative shake — Dad died nine years ago, I wasn’t going to be talking to him about this. I mean, yes, I could talk with him about it in my imagination, but he wouldn’t be able to tell me whether he had ever gone fly fishing in saltwater (he probably had) and if so, what flies he had used and what he had caught.
Old habits die hard. For the last seven years of Dad’s life, I was living three thousand miles away in California. The last two years, he couldn’t talk any more. Up until then, I’d call him most Sundays, and we’d talk for an hour or so. I wasn’t doing much fishing while I lived in California, and Dad wasn’t doing much fishing those last five years. But we both still thought about fishing and we both still liked to talk about fishing, if either of us had anything new to say. So it’s not surprising that when I saw that guy fly fishing, I’d think about talking it over with Dad.
Here it is, nine years after he died, and there are still a bunch of things I’d like to talk over with Dad. And maybe I’ll go fishing on Father’s Day.