As a kid I remember noticing the sky was different in Wisconsin and looking up to see darker sky and brighter stars, and more than I could see at home, and being enchanted by the expanse. My mom is from Wisconsin and my dad met her there working summers at a family business. So when they divorced and and argued, or when they wanted to get us out for the weekend, we’d go “up north.” Both of them, not together. Each had family there.
I don’t look at the sky enough. I was getting organized for an ice-fishing outing Friday night after my son was asleep and for some reason I looked up and in the moment flashed back to different times as a kid noticing this difference. Getting to a small cabin on Lake Mason long after my bedtime on Friday nights, a Christmas eve in a motel room there when I was young enough to still believe in Santa, and even just outside Milwaukee the first quiet night living there after having spent my (short) life in a small neighborhood hemmed in by freight trains.
Each year the window to ice fish is very small, because of life and weather, and midway through January this year there was skim ice and open water on most of the lakes we fish. But the lakes all locked up since the cold, nine or ten days now, and there's eight or ten inches of sturdy glass ice, even over deep water.
My brother and I walked out when it was still dark. We drilled a few holes to find depth and got oriented to the area we wanted to fish, based on vegetation and water depth maps, and started setting up. Most of our fishing is with tip-ups, a simple contraption that suspends a spool of line and a baited hook under the ice; when a fish takes the bait it releases a horizontally-taut flag that springs vertical.
We set a few in, then set up the shelter, then a few more tip-ups, cleaned up the scattered gear. Then, quiet. We had three thermoses of hot coffee and a few bottles of water in the tent, and a couple small propane heaters. It's cold out, but it gets comfortable. Relaxing, even.
On a busy day with two or three people fishing, you might chase 30 flags. We take turns. You won't catch fish every time one pops, but it makes for a fun day of jogging from the shelter, to see if the line is still being spooled out. Sometimes you’re staring at one and it springs; that’s fun. Sometimes the bite on the bait is so violent and lake so quiet the spring of the flag makes a noise you can hear distant. Most often you'll see line being led out slow and sometimes the arm spins fast like a top and it's just a matter of setting the hook and pulling the line in hand-over-hand while a fish on the other end tries to shake loose. And even if it's someone else's turn to bring a fish in, having someone else around to grab the fish as it gets close, or hold the (forceps, spreaders, scissors), or bring the bait ... it's a communal effort.
My son came out for a few hours in the afternoon; it was too cold in the morning for him. He took big purposeful steps across the lake, like it was exactly where he was meant to be. He’s been talking about this since it started getting cold. My mom walked him out. When he made it to our spread I pulled him in a sled around our tip-ups, and he leaned out dragging a hand in the snow. He sat inside the shelter to get warm, and my brother covered the windows in the shelter so he could lean over the drilled holes and look into the lake.
It being single-digit cold didn't stop him from rolling in the snow, asking to walk a hundred or more meters to the nearest neighbor to see what they were catching, wanting to sled at the park across the lake, from climbing the snow-plowed hills at the boat launch and standing there like he conquered the town.
We did not have 30 flags that day. It was a slow, and cold enough (-1 when we started drilling) that we chiseled out the holes every couple hours because of new ice. We were out 11 hours, all told. Fresh cold air and relaxing and quiet, hot coffee, and an occasional fish. (Three northern pike, none legal, and a handful of small perch.)
The rides home, we’re on our fourth season doing this. My son and I stop for coffee for me, and milk for him. A cookie or some treat if he wants. He tries to shout over my shoulder that he wants coffee and laughs when I look back and try to be stern to get him to cut it out; it's a gag now and he knows he's not getting coffee and I know that he knows but he still asks for coffee. We talk about the day, and I put on music or a baseball podcast he likes, and we talk until he sleeps, and then I drive slow and carry him inside when we get home. It's true they grow fast, it's true what they say about you won't know when the last time you carry your son will be, so I still carry him.
All I can think about, when it gets quiet. When he’s awake and I can see him looking out the window in the dark. One of the dominating thoughts anyway. The age he is now, it's when I have memories of starting to understand the world. My parents were getting divorced. It was tense. And I see him ever smarter, more mature, pushing boundaries, making good decisions and occasionally ones he thinks he can sneak by us or get away with but mostly doing the right thing, I can hear in his voice him being slightly withholding sometimes, holding things for himself, thinking through things on his own and I just want to know what he's thinking and how he's making sense of it all.
Listening
Cannonball Adderly
Oscar Peterson Trio
Miles Davis Quartet
"It's true they grow fast, it's true what they say about you won't know when the last time you carry your son will be, so I still carry him."
That's the ticket.
This was such a joy to read! You have spent so many years writing about violence and the effects of ACEs - and done that important work so well - that I am very glad to read about a day of quiet and delight and connection with your own child. Thank you for sharing this.