Grandpa sat on the pond’s bank with a fishing pole in her hand, an apron around her waist, a bonnet on her head, and a pail full of dirt and wiggly worms by her side.
“Grandpa!” I yelled. “Will you please put a worm on my hook?” She did not answer, so I walked closer to her, thinking she might not have heard me.
As I held the old cane pole with the wormless hook waiting for her to put a creepy worm on it, she replied, “Honey, how old are you?”
“Grandpa, you know I am six!” I said, laughing.
“Well, you are old enough to put your own worm on that hook.”
My eyes grew large, and my mouth opened in disbelief. My favorite grandmother in the whole world was not going to help me. I was dejected and certainly would not put that squirmy, ugly worm on the hook by myself!
I stomped my feet and shed a few tears, but Grandpa refused to notice me. She never uttered a sound except when she caught a big brim and yelled, “Whoopee!”
The fish kept biting, and I kept pleading but to no avail. Finally, I knew I needed to dig in the bucket and find a worm if I was going to fish with Grandpa.
From then on, I became an expert in locating worms. My skills were well known to anyone interested in knowing them. Grandpa was about the only one who was.
We would fish nearly every day when I visited her, and she even let me exaggerate the size of the brim or bass I caught. Again, Grandpa was about the only one who pretended to believe me.
The funny thing about the lessons I learned sitting on the bank of a pond; they have stayed with me all my life. I realized that if you want to catch a fish, fulfill a dream, or live your best life, you must be brave enough to dig for it.
Life teaches us to keep trying and digging every day. There is no day that goes by that does not require patience, work, or understanding. There is not a day when we cannot learn a lesson. Sometimes we are not open to knowledge, and often we lose patience. Some days we are not the best we can be because we are not motivated to be. Those are the days we let the big fish swim on by to be caught by someone else.
I recall very few days when Grandpa wasted a day. She did her chores, didn’t complain, and rewarded herself by sitting in her folding chair by the pond when the day was done.
I also learned from fishing with my Grandpa how to teach a child to accept responsibility. Some grown-ups missed that little tidbit of information. They blame everyone for not improving their lives, relationships, or inability to catch a big fish.
Grandpa was not an enabler of anyone who would not try, including a six-year-old. It started early with all of us. She was willing to listen to the crying, yelling, and begging because she wanted us to learn that we were not always going to get our way, mainly when it was the wrong way.
The lesson she taught me about not relying on others to do the hard work has served me well. Being a single parent of three children required me to be self-reliant for much of my life. I never resented doing what was needed to put a fish on the table to feed my children. Even if I didn’t like the tasks—even if some of them felt like sticking slimy worms on hooks—I didn’t mind them.
One of my readers once told me her favorite stories were about “Grandpa.” I smiled as I thought about the many lives my grandmother touched. She still inspires by the salt-of-the-earth way she lived. Hers was a simple, rewarding life of cooking meals for her family, loving her husband, tending her garden, playing with children, laughing with her friends, adoring the Lord, and teaching a six-year-old a pailful of lessons by using a wiggly worm and a hook.
RELATED: Her name was “Grandpa!”
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About the author: Lynn Gendusa is an author and columnist whose work appears weekly in newspapers in her home state of Georgia. She is regularly featured in the USA Today Networks around the country, including, The Tennessean. In addition, her stories appear in senior magazines across the US as well as in Guideposts. Lynn Gendusa’s latest book is “Southern Comfort: Stories of Family, Friendship, Fiery Trials, and Faith.” She can be reached at www.lynngendusa.com.
