One Last Trip
Posted by Danielle Bean in Family on Thursday, October 16, 2008 9:06 AM
The lakes are growing cold and dark. The trees are taking on their rusty hues. Once-frisky fish are growing sluggish and sinking ever deeper into dark waters, readying for winter.
And so my boys of summer have hung up their fishing poles for another year. They’ve made their last boat trip of the season to their favorite secret pond.
I know very little about these fishing trips of theirs. And that is as it should be.
I welcome my men home after dark, scold them to wash their hands, and heat their dinner plates.
I load their pictures onto my computer while listening to jokes and stories of their evening and afternoon. A day they’ve spent together. Boys with their father. No phones, no television, no computers to distract them—just a wide open, quiet spot in God’s world that they know and love. Together.
It’s a bittersweet thing to pull a beloved old boat from the water for the last time of the season.
I don’t know much about these all-male excursions, but when I study photos of my boys, gloriously grinning in the glowing sunshine of a late fall afternoon, I think I do know something. I know the feeling behind those faces—the joy that comes from being surrounded by love and security, God’s blessing and bounty.
And when I kiss them good night, their boyish bodies still smelling faintly of bug spray and sunscreen, I am glad for them. So glad that I am grinning too.
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