Pigtails and a hat that was too big for her. . . that’s the way I remember it now.
“Your grandmother wore this hat when she used to fish with me, that was before you were born,” I told my granddaughter as we walked into a broad meadow lush with summer grass and dotted in the distance with brown and white grazing cattle.
She had been begging me to take her fishing for a long time, several years, in fact. She’d see me return with a string of rainbow trout, ask me questions about where they came from . . . ‘was it the mountain streams, Grandpa? How did you catch them with that long pole? Can I go, too?’ Someday, I’d tell her. Someday. The word took the happy expectation out of her eyes, and her chin would sink with disappointment. I’d put my hands on her small shoulders, saying Molly, we’ll go someday, I promise. When that day arrived – her tenth birthday – we were both excited. I knew I couldn’t have given her anything she wanted more.
“Grandpa,” she said, “I’m naming this my ‘Someday Hat.’”
The meadow was flush with sunlight, the sky was clear and bright blue like her eyes. She proudly clutched the small fly rod I had made for her, taking care to hold the tip up as we headed for the glistening ribbon of water, and occasionally pushing the back of the brim of her hat.
It was August. The stream was low, and the wading was easy. From the sloping banks, I would point out where to cast and how to let her fly drift, and how to strike by lifting the rod when the trout rose to grab it. Following my instructions, she hooked a small, bejeweled Easter brook trout on her first try. I still have the picture I took. It’s under the glass on my writing desk, along with some others.
Molly grew up, and we continued to take fishing trips. We drove and camped together in the years that followed, through her high school years, then college. It was an annual ritual every summer. We’d venture further from home in California to fish the storied rivers of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, learning about new waters, learning new techniques such as fishing with tiny #18, 2,0, and 22 midges, dropper rigs with corkies, and double fly combinations – styles and setups unnecessary in the Sierra freestone streams. As I got older, she got better and better.
One day, she called about another trip she had in mind. By this time, she had finished medical school to become a family physician. I still lived in the house where she grew up, and Molly lived in the Bay Area. Our fishing outings had become infrequent due to her work.
“Grandpa,” she began, “You’ve been saying someday you want to fish in Alaska. I want to take you there . . . you’ve always talked about going. Now I want to make it happen.”
“I don’t know,” I started to say. “I’m getting a little, you know . . . maybe too old for that. It might be too strenuous.”
“Phooey. You’ll be just fine.”
She talked some more excitedly about what the trip would be like, then had to go because she was being called on another line. “Love you, talk soon,” and she rang off.
Alaska? I was eighty-three, with a bad knee and a pacemaker. Still, how many more trips were there?
The Tularik Lodge was everything an Alaskan fishing destination I had imagined – rugged and comfortable. The first night, we had a sumptuous dinner in a rustic dining room festooned with mounted trout on the walls, enormous rainbows nearly a yard long bearing witness to the stories the host told. Molly’s smile was broad with anticipation, as she softly poked me in the ribs to reaffirm the angling adventures that lay ahead.
We’d board a float plane each day, flying out to rivers that bisected the barren landscape. Our pilot and guide, armed with a rifle, would walk us to productive stretches of water, help us pick out favored bunny leeches and woolly buggers to tie on, then show us how to cast and drift the riffles and pools. Molly and I were stunned by the size and power of the Alaskan trout. We’d holler and celebrate each hook-up. Often, the fish would run us downstream two or three times, only to turn at the bottom of the pool and charge back, testing our fishing rods to their limits.
Upon returning to the lodge at night, we’d hug one another, proclaiming it was the best time we’d ever had. And she was right. It was the best, and the last.
That following spring, my daughter got married, and she and her partner moved to Ethiopia, where they worked in a children’s hospital. Before she left, she told me not to worry. “I’ll be back . . . we’ll fish again then.” Pausing for a moment, with tears in her eyes, she handed me the weathered gray hat and added, “Take care of this for me.”
I can’t walk streams anymore. I hung up my fly rod on the wall of my den in our old house, where I live alone. It’s there with fishing pictures of Molly and me, a mounted trout from Alaska, and the ancient gray fedora hanging next to my favorite photo of my wife, who’d accompanied me in our early married years before she died too early.
Fishing was the line that connected the three of us. I like to think we’ll all be on the water again. Together. Someday.
