The flower of Midlife sifted through faith, family and heaping helping of southern fried chicken.

My son.  Late yesterday he asked me to watch him take his bait out. He fishes for sharks. Last week he caught a tiger, bull and two black tips.

He ferries his bait 400 yards out in the Gulf on a kayak. The only thing I ask is that he let someone know when he is taking the bait out. What we could do for him bobbing out there if something happened I’m not sure — but at least we would know he was bobbing out there in his life jacket.  

I thought I was on watch duty — not watch the line duty.  

Turned out he wanted me to hold the line with my hand as the boat when out. That way the drag doesn’t have to be so tight. Tight drag means it’s hard to pull out. Okay — this is what happened.  

The minute I let my hand up  thinking I was set to lose a digit with the razor-sharp line…. 

I saw this and knew that he was going to kill me.

the line started zipping up in the reel and there is absolutely nothing you can do, except look at your 16 year-old who was 200 yards out in the Gulf and know you don’t want to be anywhere near when he saw this on the sand.  

So I left.  

Marching up to the house and waited for him to come in and see it.  

He was going to be furious because he is like me.  

 Most important point lost in all the fury….I didn’t volunteer for line duty.  

Well, there was lots of groaning and moaning. How he’d  just lost $100 worth of line. How his grandfather and 11 year old cousin have no trouble doing  this.  

Volunteering to undo the line, I spied a yellow sandcastle mold. This was going to show him, that you don’t give up and that no matter how terrible things…..  

This is how far I got. I was so cotton-picken insane that when I took this picture my ugly-@*@- feet were in it and…  

 I didn’t even care.  

There the line sits just like that 12 hours later.  

My son hasn’t talked to me much. He still has other fishing reels, but this was his super-duper Stratocaster – PennSenator something or other.  

Wish there was a tidy resolution to this fish tale but none as yet.  

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to …. do something we should never have been asked to do in the first place.  

So there.

Look who came up for breakfast this morning. Well, I guess he thought he had breakfast then it really wasn’t.

I asked my son – twice — the name of the lure he used.

“It was a Zara Spook.”

“It was a top water lure. He inhaled it.”

Poor guy.

I’m feeling sorry for a five pound bass, who is back swimming away.

I hate to be really  hungry. How terrible to be voraciously hungry and your Chick-fil-A biscuit snatched from your mouth. And to make things worse, a giant metal hook rammed into your cheek. They say fish don’t feel these things. How can they be so sure?

I did hold him while my son went to get his scale.

“Just put your hand over the teeth and grab him there.”

Bass have teeth?

But being the good mom, I rustled up enough courage to put my hand in his mouth and hang on. That was one big mouth. Looking down into it, his poor gills sucked in and out. I didn’t feel that sorry for him then… concentrating so hard on not freaking out and dropping him.

 After weigh in, he swam away. Into our lives for a moment, then a swish of a tale and gone.

I remember when that 16 year old was two catching his first bass with me.

With a swish of a tale…so much has passed.

My hands still smell like him (the fish I mean). But I guess that will leave me too.