Steve Jobs once said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
Thirty years ago, as a young father I sat on a pier with my four year old son aiding him in discovering the joy and serenity of fishing. As he sat in my lap, my arms protectively encircling him, we watched intently as the cork bobbed ever so slightly. Suddenly, the line went taut and the cork dropped below the surface. I whispered, “Justin, let’s give the rod a little jerk to set the hook then we’ll reel in and see what we’ve caught.” With his little hand engulfed in mine, we began pulling in our line. At the end, struggling mightily, was a tiny perch, obviously a tot also. As I removed the fish from the hook to release him back into the water, I explained to my son that this fish was likely just about his age and that surely his father and mother would miss him if we kept him. He nodded and said, “Bye-bye little fish.” Engulfing my son in my arms again, I inquired, “So how do you like fishing?” He immediately thrust his little arms up above him in the classic victory move and shouted, “Behold the fisherman!”
This weekend I searched for the picture that captured that moment. It wasn’t too hard to find. It sat framed on a side table in our living room along with many other images of family and events we cherish. I knew I wanted to use this photo in this Inspiration. It was a connected dot, which will hopefully become evident to readers as this story unfolds.
On Monday, when I opened the picture’s frame to scan it into my computer, I discovered inside a folded sheet of paper. It was a poem composed by my son. He wrote it in 1999 some 16 years after the photo was taken.
A Father
and a
Son
and a fishing pole
and a Firefly moment
caught in the camera jar.
A little light
of love
that brightened the path
that two tiny feet walked.
Fast forward to this past week. On Thursday, my son, now a thirty-four year old man, and I boarded a charter boat for an overnight deep-sea fishing adventure. Over the next two days. each time he would hook a fish, my eyes were drawn to him as my thoughts turned backward, connecting the dots to that pier we sat on thirty years earlier. My arms no longer need to encircle him in a protective grasp, but still the “Firefly moment” of three decades past was resurrected with crystal clarity. As I watched him pull fish after fish into the boat, I couldn’t help myself as I found myself thrusting my arms up above me in the classic victory move and shouting, “Behold the fisherman!”
You don’t raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out to be heroes, even if it’s just in your own eyes. – Walter M Schirra
Have an AWE-full week and weekend!
William J. “Bill” Bacque’