On Adam's Pond

David lays on the grass next to me. He lifts his hands behind his head to make a pillow and stares up at the sky. Wisps of horsehair cloud float across the blue. An airplane made gnat-size by distance rushes silently toward the sun. I hear David sigh.

“Well, when you get older you learn to enjoy the simpler things in life.”

“Mmm…” Is all that I can manage.

Lately, selfishness and worry have robbed me of joy. I have been going through the motions of life while feeling little connection to it. In desperation I have asked Adam to take David and me fishing at his Grandfather’s pond. David tried his hand at fishing, but age and a stroke made his casts look like someone whipping a horse. As for me, no force – human or supernatural, could have made me wet a hook this day. Instead I lay on the bank. Finally tiring of inept casts and tangled lines David came to join me. Across the inlet both of us watched Adam as he gracefully tossed his line among the reed beds. Every now and then we hear a shout as he hooks another crappie or bluegill.

As usual, David is undeterred by my silence. He knows that it is nothing personal. He charges ahead determined to cheer me up.

“Yep. I wish I was eighteen again. I could have walked around this entire pond by now. Probably could even have walked halfway across the water.”

Another mmm from me.

David sighs. He sighs often.

“Well it sure is good to remember the simple things. Like friends, and this pond. Oh and yes - fishing without catching any fish.”

“Fishing without catching any fish” breaks through the darkness in my brain. I laugh.

David laughs.

“Golden Pond.” He says. “Somehow that phrase just comes to me right now.”

Content with making me laugh, David struggles to his feet and hobbles over to where Adam continues catching fish after fish. David smokes. Adam smokes. Adam catches another fish and puts it on his stringer. David smokes. Adam smokes. Adam catches another fish. Throughout the afternoon the pattern repeats. Smoke. Catch fish. Put fish on stringer. David continuously chatters on, about what I cannot hear, but I do hear Adam laugh – happy, warm notes across the pond.

The light fades into evening. Adam raises his stringer of fish. David takes a picture and Adam releases the fish. Forever captured – friends, fish and a warm November day; a day warmer than most, fish who’ll live to be caught another day, and friends who some would label as crazy but who only see each other as guys out fishing.

The journey back up the hill to the car is difficult for David. His legs are weak from the stroke, smoking and inactivity. (He will call me a liar for mentioning the smoking and inactivity, but we both know they weaken his legs in the same way that we both know that eating sugar has helped bring on the depressive shadows in my head). We pause frequently for him to catch his breath but he pushes on – sighing and wheezing all the way.

We finally reach the car. I open the doors. Adam gets in back – David always rides shotgun. David is catching his breath but is still wheezing when he looks over his glasses at me.

“Thanks Dale. That was a little bit of heaven.”

I turn the car around. As the front windshield faces west I am blinded by light bright enough to burn the shadows from my brain. I hear David’s camera click next to me.

“Wow.” He wheezes and puts down the camera. “Wow.”