Time
Spent with My Father
by
Rosemary Freedman
26
bluegill were placed on my stringer
and
entered into the fishing contest.
I
was six. They snapped a Polaroid
of
me with that smile wide as a canoe,
my
small fingers holding up the line
with
my fish shining like
silver
Christmas ornaments
and
taped it to the bait-house wall.
Now
at 50 I recount that story with
the
joy of someone who had won
a
Nobel Prize—only to have it pointed out
that
I had cheated by scooping the fish
out
of water with a Styrofoam cup.
The
shiny tiny dinosaur-looking creatures
gulping
for breath like fat
diabetic
chain-smokers telling
the
last chapters of their stories.
And
what happened to the other children?
Those
line casters who patiently waited
and
caught nothing? Perhaps they
stared
at my tackle-box prize
the
way women stare with envy
at
designer purses they will never own.
It
was true, I was a cheater.
I
thought my father loved taking me with him,
day
fishing, night fishing, in the small boat with
the
green Coleman lantern and those small little
nets
he seemed to forever be screwing around with
that
had something to do with the light
and
our seeing. I just know there was a lot of cussing
around
those little cup like sacs that looked oddly
the
shape of testicles. Once I thanked my father
for
always taking me fishing. He laughed out loud.
“You
are joking, right? Your mother made me take you,
to
give her a break.” I was one of his punishments
as
I later found out—he was a cheater too.
About
Rosemary Freedman: “I am married and have seven children. I
have a B.A. in creative writing and literature, and a master's in
nursing education, a post-masters as a Nurse Practitioner and a
post-masters as a Clinical Nurse Specialist. When I am not writing
poetry, I work as an advanced practice nurse.”