Father Son Frogs and Fish

 
Last night I loaded up the van, shepherded Lennon into it, and took off for Rancho Seco Lake. My church was having its annual father and son (make it plural if you have more than one son) camp out. It started off a little rocky when both Rachel and I refused to allow Lennon to take any video games. He spent the drive reading The Silver Chair with a surly expression on his face.

Once we pulled up to the campsite though, things got much better. I found a few friends to talk to. Lennon found a bunch of little frogs, which he put in an empty orange juice bottle. We set up the tent. We took a friend and his 3 year old son out in the canoe. We tried to fish, but didn't catch anything. (Lennon was using his frogs as bait).  When we got back and I was loading everything into the car Lennon yelled that he caught one. Sure enough, he landed a crappie.

We got back in time for a fireside devotional where I took a seat to listen and Lennon went to get closer to the fire.  He came back a little while later with one of his frogs impaled on a stick, telling me that he just ate a frog leg--in the car on the way back he had asked me if I dared him to eat one. Of course I did. Sure enough, his little frog--maybe a 1/2 an inch long--had a missing appendage. Lennon ate a second leg and told me it was ok, but the foot was gross. Then he put the rest of it in his mouth, bit down, made a hilarious disgusted face, and then swallowed. He told me later that he knew it was ok to eat it because Bear Grylls said that all frogs are ok to eat except brightly colored ones.

After the fireside we grabbed our box of Sour Patch Kids and bag of Cheetos and headed over to play some Dominican Dominoes. I guess it's a tradition now because we played last year with the same guys. We played till almost 1, or at least I did. Lennon was downing Sour Patch Kids like crazy and getting kind of loopy. He was starting to lose focus. Then he got out the ipod and pretty much gave up on the game. After a while he went back to the tent, where I found him about an hour later blasting the ipod (I could hear it as I approached the tent--and he was wearing head phones) and playing solitaire.

So even though the sun was up at like 6 o 'clock in the morning and by 6:30 it sounded like the whole camp was up (there was even a soccer game going on), Lennon slept in until almost 8. Coincidentally, his awakening coincided almost simultaneously with the serving of breakfast.

This picture was taken after I had packed up everything in the tent, including the sleeping pad that he had been lying on.

While he was asleep, I decided I would do a little fishing from the bank, so I grabbed my fishing rod, still rigged with a plastic worm from the night before, and headed down to the lake for my first fishing of 2011. Within 10 minutes I landed this bad boy:

When I got back, people were lining up for breakfast, so I decided to get Lennon up. (He probably would have slept in longer if I hadn't.)

We ate breakfast and then went out for one last fishing trip before we had to get home.

Lennon caught two more fish: green sunfish, one decent, one smallish, but I didn't have any more luck. At least not as far as the fishing went, but I did feel lucky to be able to spend some time with my boy. On our way back to the boat ramp, Lennon was standing up in the front of the canoe with one foot on the bow deck, like George Washington in that famous painting of the crossing of the Delaware River. I wanted to tell him to sit down and be safe. But I didn't. I let him be. I gave him a little freedom to do what he wanted to do. Maybe he was testing his balance. Maybe he was testing his courage. He didn't seem entirely comfortable standing up in the rocking boat. Maybe he was testing me, seeing how I would react. Maybe he wanted me to tell him to sit down and be safe. I don't know what he was doing. I guess I rarely do. But what I do know is that as I sat back and watched him, he didn't fall. He wobbled a little every now and then. At one point he almost went over, but he didn't. He dropped his front foot back down to the floor, bent his knees a little and threw his arms out to the sides. He almost sat back down, but he didn't. He regained his balance and put his foot back up on the deck. And I didn't say a word. I just watched and thought about how my boy is growing up. He's taking chances. He's trying to keep his balance, maybe trying to find a balance. And I realized that he's still standing. He has a lot of challenges in his life. I'm probably one of them. No, I'm definitely one of them. But he hasn't stopped trying and sat back down. He's staying up and I should give him credit for that. As he stood tall, the morning light reflecting in the gently rippling water around him, I was reminded that he's a great kid. And for some reason, this becomes more apparent when he's away from home and school and his sisters and allowed to stand up in a canoe and, I guess, when he's dared to eat a frog.