Dad often pointed toward the northern part of the lake and said that was where the good fishing was. I eventually realized we never went there because we didn’t own a boat. Decades later, I decided to surprise him with an expensive full-day fishing charter.
But at the marina, Dad asked to return to our old shoreline instead. He explained that when I was seven, a marina owner named Walter told him something he never forgot: his son wouldn’t remember whether he had a boat—he would remember that his father woke up before sunrise to spend time with him. The charter captain, Rick, then revealed that Walter had been his father.
We canceled the charter, grabbed our old chairs and returned beneath those oak trees. As we fished and laughed together, I finally understood what Dad had given me all those years: not expensive fishing trips or a boat, but his time. And that had always been enough.
