Since our daughters were little, we would typically head over to Conesus Lake to watch the walleye spawn each Easter Sunday afternoon. And anybody who knows me knows that the only thing I like better than watching fish is watching fish spawn. Year after year.
"What do you want to do this Easter?" Brad asked a week ago. The girls were in San Diego. It would just be the two of us. "After church, let's go to Conesus," I suggested. He frowned, thinking it over. "We'll decide when you get back," he said finally. I returned from San Diego in time for Brad to leave on a ten hour round trip pilgrimage to Detroit for a summit on Saturday. He arrived home, exhausted, late Saturday night.
"Are you sure about this Conesus thing?" Brad asked wearily as we drove through the early morning mist to the sunrise service. I nodded. Or nodded off. I can't be certain. It was really early.
Afterwards, we silently bundled up and gathered the dogs together to head to the lake. "You know," Brad began, "Easter is late this year. There probably won't even be any fish there." I shrugged, staring out the window. The actual appearance of fish never really mattered to me. "It's an hour there and an hour back," he continued. I stretched, turning towards him. I had a feeling that he was trying to communicate something really important to me here. "What are you saying?" I asked. He grimaced before taking a deep breath. "Why are we taking up two hours of our day based on the slim possibility that there may be a fish present?"
Uh-huh. So much for my loving sacrifice of placing his stupid feelings in front of my own. Here we go...
"So," I snarled, facing him, "you voluntarily drove ten hours yesterday and today you're whining because I want you to drive two?!? And you're worried about NOT seeing your stupid fish? Where was this trepidation over the past twenty years when I was dragged to this lake to watch the wonder of nature? This isn't about the spawning schedule of fish or about travel time...it's tradition!" Points for me for choking back the avalanche of name-calling erupting on my tongue. "I'm just trying to warn you," my husband yelled. "You're just trying to ruin Easter," I yelled back.
We arrived. The dogs were jubilant. It was a pleasant enough day, given the company. We hiked up the spawning run and approached the railing. An immediate flash in the water caught our attention and a smile lit up my face. Two...ten...twenty fish riding the waves, catapulting themselves toward the cataract. "There might not be any fish there," I mocked, pointing at the water and dancing with delight. Brad hid his grin as, for a moment, his wife spun around in her pink rainboots, lifting her arms heavenward and laughing as she forgot, for just a few seconds, that her daughters weren't with them this Easter Sunday.
"You tried to ruin Easter and FAILED," I informed him as we slowly walked back to the van. "Is failing to ruin Easter a bad thing?" Brad wondered to himself as he loaded his family into the vehicle. He could still hear his wife laughing as he got behind the steering wheel.
No comments:
Post a Comment