Ice Fishing.

Most little girls don’t take their first ice fishing trip at age four, because most parents would never allow it.  My father, however, had no problem dragging his would-be-ballerina out onto the polar ice caps, with only snow pants and purple flowered mittens to protect me from the elements. Our three trips to rural Pennsylvania every year were a treat, but the thought having to sit out in the cold and wait for some fish to bite on a worm made me wish we had stayed home in Baltimore. The only bright side was the dusty-rose-pink fishing pole that Dad had gotten engraved with my name, “RACHEL”, in all capital letters right above the reel.   

Because of my personalized fishing pole, I was determined to make the best of the ice fishing situation. I checked with my mom four times before we left, and as it turned out, fishing was not like hunting. Fishing hooks did not kill fish.  It was like getting a lip piercing.  I had no problem being the proud pet owner of a fish with a pierced lip.  I was even liberal enough to take a fish with a tattoo. And so, when I set out that day, I was depressed about the whole idea of fishing in the winter, but determined to come home with the cutest pierced fish in the world.  

Three hours of cold, damp, “fun” later, I was beginning to lose hope. I had been whispering to the fish for a while, and none of them had so much as nibbled on the worm.  Not that I would have noticed if they did.  This whole outing was starting to seem like an excuse for Dad to drink beer with the other dads.  We were staying at a friend’s hunting cabin with three other families, so there were three other kids my age to fish with--Bradley, Delia and Mikaela--and three other dads for Dad to drink beer with. All of the kids were super-cool.  They lived near where we were vacationing, in Factoryville, Pennsylvania.  They probably did this sort of thing every day.  As a city kid from the lower-middle-class areas of Baltimore, I could have regaled them with tales of my wacky neighbors (who were all on heroin and had major appliances on their lawns) and the local crime statistics.  Fishing, however, was not an area about which I was particularly knowledgeable.
    
     “So...umm...do you guys do this a lot?” I offered timidly.
      “I do it every chance I git. Fishin’s a man’s sport.  It’s manly.”  Bradley said while puffing out his chest just a little.  Well, I think he puffed his chest out, but our coats were so voluminous that one could hardly be sure. Maybe he just gave the impression of manly broad-chestedness.  I gave a sigh, and basked in his glow for just a moment.  I was so in love with that kid.

     “I hate ice fishing,” Mikaela said with a cold sniffle. For that, she was my hero.  I scootched just a little closer to her side of our fishing hole.  We could be the indoorsmens club.  She and I both had curly hair anyway, so it made sense to me. As I scootched, I moved my fishing pole just a little bit, and was very startled to feel it move back.  I tugged on it just to see what was going on down there, and it tugged back, with more attitude that I thought was altogether necessary. So I gave it a good hearty pull, and the battle began. I had no idea what was going on, but I was determined to win.  It wasn’t until Brad shouted at me to start “reelin’er in!” that I realized that I was in a position to catch a fish.  

As I pulled, and furiously wound my line back in, I envisioned my catch as a giant blue marlin.  There was a video game about catching blue marlins, and although in the game you had to be on a boat in the middle of the ocean, I didn’t know what other kind of fish to picture. Besides the ones from The Little Mermaid.  

After what felt like hours of epic battling,  I got the fish to where I could see it, about three inches from the surface of the water.  I gave a final pull, and Brad grabbed the line so I would have a chance to grab at the fish.  The minute the fish’s wet scales touched my mitten (and froze to it) I knew what his name would be.  Angus.  I would name him after my  scrappy, barefoot imaginary friend.  

When the other children gathered around to see my catch, I felt what must have been my first little stabs of pride.  That pride was quickly replaced by the stabs of low-grade frostbite where the freezing water had gone through my knit mitten, and I started to yelp about the pain in my fingers.  The fathers heard the commotion and came to inspect Angus.  He was roughly four and a half inches long.  My mitten was just big enough to hold him, and a few scales stayed on the yarn when Dad pulled Angus out of my hand.  He gave my fish one look, laughed at him, and dropped him back into the hole I had spent hours coaxing him out of.  My eyes swelled with tears.  I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Angus.

  “No crocodile tears, young lady.  Capisce?”  He turned and went back to the fishes before he could hear me say “Ka-peesh” and wipe the last tear away from my cheek.

By the time the “adults” had finished their ice fishing and their case of beer, the other children and I had huddled together for warmth, and were very seriously thinking of drawing straws to see who we would have to cannibalize in order to survive.  Bradley bravely volunteered to let us have his left leg, because he had heard of a man who won a marathon with only one leg.  This, naturally, made me very (very) briefly forget about the cold and the wind.  How dreamy Bradley was.  He was five, an older man, and a very accomplished ice fisherman.  Also, he was kind of a ginger.  His strawberry blond curls had won him a first place trophy in a baby beauty contest only three years before, and he was still riding the wave of victory.  
    “It’s true,” Bradley informed us. “They put a titan-yum leg on the stump there, and springs on the bottom, and he was the fastest runner of everyone there.  He must have gone a hunnert miles an hour.”  Bradley was so educated.  I was swept away by his expertise, even when he declared that, “If I had a titan-yum leg put on, I’d have them put a reel on’er.  Then I’d learn to cast by kickin’, and I’d be able to fish whenever I wanted.”  

I decided then and there that I would break Bradley of his fishing addiction, so that when I married him, our children wouldn’t have to ice fish.  Once his story was over and we had nothing to entertain us, Bradley’s glowing charm began to wear thin, and I started to very seriously consider crying loudly. Crying loudly would probably result in annoying Dad enough to take me back to the cabin.  If I hadn’t been so scared of falling through the ice, I would have walked back myself.  When I explained this to Brad, hoping that perhaps he would bravely walk me back and hold my frozen hand, he seemed confused about why I would want to stop ice fishing. 

Luckily, I was spared the embarrassment of admitting how indoorsy I really was by the return of our adults.  Dad packed up my “gear” with his, and loaded his tackle box into the back of our hunter green 1992 Ford Explorer--the only car my father had ever, or would ever, buy new.  I got to sit in the front because mom and the babies were back at the cabin, which meant that whenever Dad turned his head to speak to me, the melting ice in his mustache and beard would fly into my face.  

     “Didn’t you love that? You were the only kid to catch a fish.  Did you guys have fun?” he said with a straight face.  My father’s sense of fun was something I was beginning to give up on.  Before waiting for an answer, he continued, “We’re eating the fish that Mr. Higgins and I caught.  Fresh fish for dinner in January, can you believe it? Don’t you just wish we lived here all the time?”

On that point, I could almost agree. I did wish we lived there all the time, as long as all the time was summer.  Our trips into rural northeast Pennsylvania were a wonderful break from our real life in the middle of white-trash Baltimore, where the neighbors tended to leave their children unattended and let their dogs use my climbing tree as a bathroom.  In Factoryville, there was a swimming pond and a lake to canoe in, and a mountain with nothing but trees.  And of course, there was Bradley.  Warm weather only worsened his fishing addiction, but he looked adorable in his tiny green fishing vest and matching hat...wait a moment...FISH FOR DINNER?

     “Um, Daddy?” I said in his general direction. I wasn’t about to let his bizarre hobby ruin my evening meal.  However, my protest went unvoiced because we had already gotten back to the cabin.  I forgot we were so close.  The car had been primarily for beer transport, and we could easily have walked.  My attempts to get Dad’s attention were lost in the hubbub of unloading the children and the catch, and my mother was far too distracted by my brothers--both under two years old--to worry about my aversion to eating fish.  They made me think of The Little Mermaid, my favorite movie and second-favorite ginger.  Every bite of fish tasted like a chomp out of her tailfin.  

By the time we all folded our hands and shouted “GRACE!”, I had built dinner into quite the dramatic ordeal in my mind.  I could smell the fish cooking from the living room, and had to think about my future as Mrs. Bradley Higgins to keep from throwing up. I was ready to try anything to get out of eating fish.  But then, I sat next to Bradley.

     “It’s so awesome that we’re eating fish from the lake,” he said.  “When we get older, I’m going to catch you dinner every night, and you’ll cook it,” he added with a grin that was missing some teeth.  I was stunned.  Visions of living with him in a log cabin swam in my head. I would keep house all day while he set out on the lake in a rowboat to get food for our table.  Oh, and our two beautiful gingerkids--Ariel and Bradley Junior--would play Hungry Hungry Hippos by the wood stove, just like Bradley and I did when we were young (yesterday).  Distracted from the stench of seafood by these happy thoughts, I ate fish without complaint just that one time.  

Little did I know that my father would use this one time as an excuse to make me eat things I didn’t like for the rest of my life.