When I was a kid, my dad used to take me fishing two or three times a month. We’d climb into is giant brown car and drive out of the city so early that it still felt like night. We headed towards the water, reaching the pier as the sun took to the sky. The smell was sour and salty–worms, dried blood, and ocean. His boat was a beautiful thing. I don’t know that it was huge, but as a kid it felt like we could hold a thousand people. We only ever brought along three or four. The lot of us would climb in. The older men circled around me and Henry (it was always Henry) would stay back a little to push us off from the dock. Then he jumped in, flashing that narrow smile.
When I was a kid I could spend all day on the water with the guys, catching fish, listening to their conversations, imagining what it might be like to be a grown man. My idea of adult male friendships was formed in cracked seats of my father’s fishing boat. Sometimes they talked about politics, or girls. They didn’t ask me about grades. They didn’t cover my ears when the language became harsh. Once, they let me have a beer.
Now I have my own kids. They are growing up in front of a console. They are growing up on dead grass fields in the high socks of soccer or clad in the plastic armor of football. They are growing up around other kids in a desert far removed from the water and from the conversations of my youth.
I know I am the man I am today because of the time I had learning how to become one. I know that learning was entirely incomplete. My dad died when I was just twelve years old. Still, it was twelve years of conversations and situations and learning the society of men. This year my eldest will be twelve and I wonder what he has learned from me. Our waters are digital. Our boats are keyboards and joysticks, coaches meetings and sideline chats with the referees. The world has moved on from the time I grew up in. Still, I can’t help but think I can do more and be more to teach them what to do and be as men.