Rain dripped from bare pecan limbs as gray clouds tumbled across a December sky. Walking down the driveway, I caught whiffs of woodsmoke on the wind as it tore across our chimney top and whistled through the trees.
I hoped I’d find a good fire going and, when I opened the door, I saw I would not be disappointed. A solid wall of orange and red shone from the brick rectangle above the hearth. To one side, the Old Man sat bent above a tangle of trotline, boxes of new hooks and swivels on his left side, a small trashcan on his right. Any possibility for putting the lines to work lay months away, though, and I told him as much.
“This isn’t the season for trotline fishing,” he said. “It’s the season for mending. Just because you can’t go do what you want right this minute doesn’t mean the Good Lord made a mistake in the layout of the seasons. Things need time to rest and heal. Especially things as old as me.
“Besides, if you do the same thing in every month of the year, you’ll get tired of it.”
I told him I wouldn’t get tired of shooting the ducks that came to the creek that ran below the house.
“Yes, you would,” he insisted.
“No sir, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t,” I said.
“Well, then I’d get tired of hearing you talk about it and find some way to cut off the opportunity and there you’d be,” he said with a grin. “But that won’t happen because the ducks are only here for a few weeks at a time, and you’re mostly in school then, so since you only get a few chances to do it, you treasure those chances and remember them all year long.”
“What’s wrong with wanting more to treasure?” I asked.
“More treasure is fine, up to a point, but, if you’re not careful, you’ll get so focused on gathering more treasure you’ll forget to enjoy any it, which is why,” he said, handing me scissors and a spool of line, “it’s important we observe mending season, and appreciate each treasure in its time.”
Looking ahead as we motor through life involves battling a lot of glare on the road. Deflections, refractions and worries about what may come cloud the view. Our daily soundtrack impedes the future and distorts the present. It’s nearly impossible to tell how a day will rank while it’s still going on. A hectic pace, a distracted heart, those come with the territory. That’s generally why we have to look backward to see which were the best days of our lives. Sometimes it can be a surprise to find there’ve been as many as there have. It’s always worth looking, though, and the turn of a new year always seems an ideal time to see.
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