Normally I will pick up MJ and Matthew on a Saturday morning and Kay and I will spend time with them doing various things. Hopefully we are creating memories.
When I arrived a few weeks back, Matthew was playing a game on the TV and wouldn't stop so MJ and I went off without him. Kay had something going with her Master Gardening group so it was just MJ and I. The first stop was the botanical Gardens where we walked around looking at plants and I watched her play in the kids area, sometimes we talked to each other.
After a while we took off looking for the remains of and old settlement, we wound up bypassing it and went to Greensboro instead. We wanted to have lunch there but MJ couldn't find a suitable eatery on her phone so we went to Madison in search of a Dairy Queen, she and her phone took me right to it. After lunch it was time to head for home.
It was a fairly long drive from Madison to Jefferson. Along the way I tried to have a conversation with MJ and while she would answer my questions that was about it, mostly she was involved in her phone. The more I thought about it the more I was getting perturbed, MJ was a child of her times and I expected her to be interested in her old grandpa - what was I thinking.
A couple of miles from home, I decided to say something so I pulled off the road. As I put the truck in park I told MJ that I wanted to talk to her so she needed to put her phone down. I asked her if she had read any of my blog and she said dad had read a couple of stories to her. I asked if she knew why I wrote my blog, she said "so you will remember", I said no I remembered everything I wrote. I went on to say that one day I wanted to know something about my grandparents but there was nobody alive to tell me what I wanted to know. I told her that I wrote my memories down because I knew that some day she, her children and maybe even later generations would have questions that only I could answer and me writing down my memories would be the only way for them to get their answers.
It was about this time that she started to cry, when I asked why she was crying she told me that some things just made her cry. I gave her a hug and told her that I loved her and told that I would like it if she would put her phone down and talk to me when we were out and about. MJ told me she didn't know what to ask about so I promised to work on that part. She asked if I would teach her how to fish and I said I would which takes me to the next part of this memory.
Fast forward a couple of weeks. I called Danny to ask if the kids were doing anything that Saturday, he told me MJ had a school function but Matthew was available so I asked if Matthew would want to spend time with me. He called back and said Matthew said yes.
So, Saturday morning I picked up Matthew and away we went, I had no idea what I was going to do to hold Matthew's interest. Then I remembered that I had two spinning rods in the truck so I asked Matthew if he wanted to go to the lake and fish, I told him I would teach him to cast a spinning rod. We got to the lake and I put lures on the rods and started showing him how to hold the rod and cast it then retrieve the lure. I taught him how to untangle the lure without getting stuck with a sharp hook. Matthew hasn't had a growth spurt recently and I noticed his small hands trying to grip the rod and just knew he would get frustrated but be surprised me, in no time he was doing a two hand cast and getting good distance.
After a couple of failed cast that didn't go too far he was starting to get the hang of it but most importantly he didn't give up. It wasn't long that he was making some pretty decent cast, every time he did I made sure to compliment him and encourage him to try again. After a while we stopped for lunch at Dairy Queen, for whatever reason Matthew went into one of his moods but once the meal was done I asked if he wanted to go home or do some more fishing.
We went to three different spots that afternoon. At the last place my back was starting to ache from all the standing so I found a place to sit and just watched Matthew making cast after cast. We were both disappointed that the fish didn't cooperate but I explained that some days were like that. Matthew was quiet on the drive home, when we got there he pushed past mom and dad and went upstairs. I told Danny what we did and asked him to tell Matthew how proud I was of him.
Several days later, I talked to Danny. He told me how much Matthew had enjoyed our outing, it was all he talked about later that night. Danny said he told Matthew that he would dig out one of his rods and let Matthew show him what I had taught him then he would teach Matthew how to do it right. In no uncertain terms, Matthew informed Danny that "grandpa knew what he was doing".
This was not the first time MJ and Matthew had gone fishing with me but they were younger then, maybe now is a better time. I hope they learn to enjoy fishing, I hope they remember who got them started.
