Barbie Loflin

I have four sisters. I am the one in the middle. To my knowledge, I was the only one who ever went fishing with my dad. Of course, my going had nothing to do with my skill or expertise; it was based purely on my desire to be with him. Simple. I still remember standing on that lake shore with my toes digging into the mud, the cool morning mist kissing my face and making my unruly hair even curlier. I remember thinking how blessed people must be who live near the water and can frolic in the mist every morning. And just imagine, they could stick their toes in lake mud anytime they wanted.

I cannot remember another time in my ten years with him, that we were actually all alone together. I remember lying awake the night before wondering how many huge fish I was going to catch and thinking how proud he was going to be when he saw what a fine fisherman I was. But as I stood there that morning by my dad, casting and re-casting, reeling and re-reeling, baiting the hook time after time, it became apparent; my dream of becoming a famous bass fisherman and traveling the world with my dad in a Winnebago with a fancy boat trailing behind just wasn’t going to come true.

So I stood there on the bank praying Just one fish, God… is that too much to ask? One lousy fish. But, it was not to be so. Not even one…

Still, much to my chagrin, the stinger was absolutely loaded with fish when we headed home later that morning. Daddy was happy and I was mortified. What a loser!

As we walked up the broken sidewalk to our little country home, my mother came out the screen door and asked how it had gone. I waited for the embarrassment that I knew was coming. Oh, I caught forty million, but Barbie was dead weight. She was the albatross around my neck… (I have always been a little dramatic).

Of course my father would never have actually said something like that, but I was just so disappointed in myself.

But what my dad did at that moment just blew me out of the water. When my mom asked how it had gone, he proudly took the stringer out of the cooler and held it high, fish hanging off every hook, and then he did something I found quite stunningly beautiful; he handed the opposite end of the stringer to me, allowing me to hold it out right alongside him – as if I’d had some grand part in their catching. Only then did he answer my mother’s question, with a wink at me, and a “Well, we did pretty good.”

We… he said we.

I remember thinking, but I didn’t do anything! He did all the work, and caught all of the fish. Yet, he stood right there and let me share in his victory, made me look good when I had no true right to.

As a little girl, I thought about that for a long time. And then I finally came to the only conclusion that made sense. My dad had let me shine simply because he loved me and because he knew I loved him; loved him enough to want to be out there by the water with him before the sun had come up. It mattered to him that I had gotten up sleepy-headed and packed a couple of little sandwiches. It meant something to him that I just wanted to be there for one reason alone – because he was there.

And you see, what I got from that encounter was far more than I could have imagined. For you see, he was not looking for someone who could throw a line. He could have called one of his friends if he needed help catching those fish. What he had wanted was time with me. Me – the barefoot, tomboy, curly headed, missing front teeth, June-bug catching, creek-wading, dress-hating, misfit middle child. He simply liked my company. Go figure.

And in those moments, I had my daddy all to myself. I was a part of what he was doing. He laughed with me. He talked to me like I was something special, and when all was said and done, he let me share in the fruit of His labor. One wink told me we were a team and everybody else would have to run to catch up to what we had. That wink formed an impenetrable circle around a father and daughter and said to all comers, “You ain’t part of this club.” And in this girl’s overactive imagination, we were now and forever the sootsotwadatwe– TheSecret Order of the Society of Those Who Always Dwell at the Water’s Edge.

Ah, childhood.

Me, my father, and the water in the cool of the morning… probably the most precious memory I have of my dad, the grand Pooh-Bah of the Sootsotwadatwe’s.

Forty years later, the parties have changed a bit, but walking in the mist remains a morning ritual for me. Me, my (heavenly) Father, and the Water Word in the wetness of a new days dawning.

I rise early. He meets me there. Together we sweep away to the water’s edge. I have Him all to myself. The world is barely waking, and I am headed straight into a secret adventure. He is there. He talks to me, we laugh together, and He makes me feel like there is nowhere else He would rather be. And do you know what? When we come away from the waters, though it is He who has done the work, He always hands me my side of the stringer – a word, a poem, a short story, a vignette – a memento of our time together, and allows me to hold it out as if I had something to do with it… though we both know better.

Ah, what a wonderful Father-God we have. He still loves to walk with us in the cool of the morning, sharing His heart – and making ours burn within us – as we make our way through the shadowed wetness of the Morning Mist.