Love of fishing with grandpa is passed on

She misses going fishing with her grandfather.
She was reminded of this last week when she happened upon some old pictures. The one that inspired her nostalgia showed a middle aged man and a tiny girl. Both were holding fishing poles. They had been to Eastwood Lake in Ohio hoping to catch some bluegill. The little girl had been the only one to catch anything that day. Pride and happiness were in both their faces.
She is my daughter, Beth.
Fast forward. The grandfather has long since left this earth for the afterlife, as have others of his generation. Life, in all its complexity, has gone on. The tiny girl is now a grown woman. She still likes to fish, only now she goes with her husband and her children. They enjoy it as much as she does.
I hear stories of her daughter, Emma, fishing and taunting her own grandfather by chortling, “How does it feel to be beat by a little girl?” when she manages to catch more fish than he does. The grandfather, known as Pappy, laughs as he tells me this.
These snippets of time remind me that it is the small things that matter. The only present Beth remembers from her childhood is a doll, dubbed “Grandpa’s baby,” that he had rescued from the dump. My mother-in-law had cleaned it up and made a new dress for it. Beth and her step-sisters cherished that raggedy doll until they outgrew it. I have it now.
I remind myself of this as I am shopping for a birthday present for my daughter. She has asked for a tree. Of course, this is not the ideal time to be planting trees.
Plus, the one she has requested is out of stock in every source I have found. Several sources sell seeds, but I have no interest in that. So the search will continue for awhile longer.
My mother has told me not to buy a tree for her. Trees are dangerous. They fall over and smash houses and kill people. I am not to buy a tree for my daughter. I wonder when she developed this abnormal fear of trees.
At some point, I will either find someplace where I can pre-order a tree to be planted at the appropriate time or decide to get a different present for her birthday this year. Either way, the likelihood of her remembering what I bought for her years from now is slim.
We cannot pick and choose what others will remember. We can’t foresee which of the many photographs we take will cause us to recall a precious memory.
I, also, miss going fishing with my grandfather, although we only went a couple of times before a series of heart attacks confined him to the house and eventually killed him. I have no pictures of us fishing together, just fuzzy memories that time has glossed over.
Grandfathers are important, whether they fish or not. They add an extra dimension to a child’s life that parents, other family members, and friends cannot. At one time granddaughter Emma estimated that she had close to a million eleventy-seven grandfathers. That is one lucky girl! Each and every one adds something precious to her life.
Perhaps one day she, too, will happen upon a faded image that will remind her how much she misses spending special times with someone long gone. It will remind her how much she was loved and how much she loved them.