The Big Fish

I often travelled down to the river to do some scouting, observing the fish in the streaming, flowing water as they pass me by. I like the looks of this one; I dislike the looks of another. And from that point we usually go forward. This is when I gather my finest lures (the less attractive of them tucked away in my tackle box, hidden from view) and place them on the line and cast off, hoping one of the fish I like takes hold. This is when a fisher-person throws out the line and reels it in, reels it in, little by little. It’s this tricky little game of stringing them on.

And me, well I personally never was very good at this game. I didn’t have the discipline or the trickery in me, frankly. And in truth, I was never looking to devour my fish, but for a sort of best friend from it. Because of this, I would receive only a couple of nibbles here and there -- a pitiful amount, really, because I was choosey -- and would place the fish in a bowl, almost always realizing within a conversation or two that this was not the fish for me. I would toss them back, and wave goodbye, sad to lose a former friend.

Then one day, when I was not down at the stream, I heard it beckoning me. It called me to visit, so I answered, and approached. And as I did, my eyes grazed on two beautiful fish, one the color of sunlight and the other the color of night swimming slowly, gracefully around in circles. Mouth to tail, mouth to tail, as if a string had attached the two. For a moment I stood gazing at this remarkably different scene. I couldn’t remember having been so taken by a fish before, and as I found myself watching the two, I saw them merge into one. Large coy-like scales of that beautiful yellow and that mysterious black freckling his outer coating. And he was still circling. Gorgeous.

I sat myself down and relaxed as the fish began to swim my way. Without a lure, without a hook, without a string, he approached me with his beauty, and spoke to me as if we had known each other a little while, calling me nick names that I warmed to more quickly than the ones that any other friend had given me before. Names like “darlin” and “kid” were said to be all mine. Like he’d read my mind.

As usual, reality would call, and it was time to leave the stream for something like work, a meal or something of the like. A day here and there interrupted our small talk and correspondence, and I never felt the need to use that invisible line to call him near to me. The fish always approached. He was friendly, comforting.

Some day along the timeline, something happened, which I can’t quite put my finger on and when I would come to sit on the banks of the river, with my tackle box wide open, all of my lures displayed; the shiny, the dull, the mushy, the tattered old ones, the new and even the dark ones buried deepest in the box easily accessible, he would be gone.

Though I had them readily available, instead of the lures, I would toss pebbles into the waters, hoping it would bring him around, not wanting to use the same tricks that I used on the others before. More and more I was realizing that this fish really was something different. And I wasn’t going to let this be one of those stories of “the Big Fish” that got away.

So I sat tossing pebbles into the water as he, I presume, was off traveling to work upstream, doing what a fish does for a living, enjoying the changing of the currents and the subtle differences of what it brings. Because that is what fish like is change flowing over them, through them, and a little bit of a challenge. It’s got to be hard to stay in one place, I understand, when you’re used to floating from one thing to another. And that was fine with me. Except that I missed the conversation.

He would come back Fridays and visit for a bit. A little conversation here and there. A new question which almost always made me think even more that there was a big possibility of us truly being the best of friends, as opposite a woman and a fish could be. But they say that opposites attract and for me this was certainly the case.

So there I sit on the banks, throwing pebbles into the waters every so often during the week just in case he is around. And on Fridays I sit with butterflies in my tummy wondering if I will get a visit from my alluring friend and most of all thinking of ways that I can grow fins and gills and allow myself to fully jump in.