Behind Roxy & Kylo's Fishing Day
I have never understood the appeal of fishing. My brother, on the other hand, loved it, and I don't mean he occasionally picked up a fishing pole when the opportunity presented itself. He was really into it. He had the gear, got some of the other guys in the family interested enough to get their own, shared it with his own family, and eventually went from a little boat to a bigger one. He'd even fish in the winter. One Christmas, I found him a fishing gadget that helped locate where the fish were. I couldn't tell you exactly what it was called anymore. I just remember finding something I thought a person who loved fishing that much would appreciate. I may not have understood his fascination with fishing, but I understood that he loved it. And if there's one thing I take seriously, it's finding a good gift.
My own relationship with fishing was considerably less enthusiastic. I didn't like the smell. I wasn't interested in baiting a hook. I definitely wasn't cleaning or gutting anything, and if somebody decided to keep the catch and cook it later, I wasn't eating it either. I could go along, hang around and watch, but nobody was ever going to mistake me for the person eagerly waiting for the next fishing trip. So when I started thinking about the real-life story behind Roxy & Kylo's Fishing Day, I realized it wasn't about how much fishing had meant to me. It was about how something one person in the family loved became part of the experiences we shared together.
Fishing Was His Thing
Camping was something my family did, especially while the kids were growing up. It wasn't something I introduced, and I've never considered myself much of an outdoorsy person. It was simply one of those things the family did, so I participated. My brother's love of fishing fit naturally into those trips because if we were going camping anyway, he liked being somewhere he could fish too. For him, it was a two-fer: family camping and fishing. For me, it meant I could be part of the experience without pretending the fishing itself was my favorite part.
That's really how a lot of family activities work. Everybody doesn't have to love the exact same thing. While the people who actually wanted to fish were fishing, there were plenty of other things happening around them. People talked, food was made, the kids found things to do, and everybody spent time together. Sometimes I could go along to the water and watch. Other times I was perfectly happy doing something else. I didn't have to love the main activity to enjoy being part of the experience, and none of us needed to experience the day in exactly the same way for it to become something we shared.
Making Summer Memories Together
The pictures I found while working on this story span different points in that part of our family's life. Some are from one of the last camping trips I remember before I moved away for work. Others came later, when I returned for summer visits and joined everyone again. The kids were older by then, but we were still doing something familiar: finding things to do together and making the most of summer.
We didn't call them “summer adventures” then. Nobody was counting experiences or stopping afterward to decide what each one was supposed to mean. We went camping. My brother fished. We cooked, talked, laughed, took pictures and found other things to do while we were there. The kids had their own fun. It was simply time spent together, and one experience became another until those ordinary summer days became part of what everyone remembered.
Looking at those pictures now, I can see something I probably couldn't have seen while we were living it. We weren't just filling summer days. We were making summer memories together. That's what the kids grew up remembering, not necessarily what fish somebody caught or exactly what happened on a particular trip, but that these were things their family did together. The activity gave us somewhere to go and something to do. The memories came from everything that happened once we were there.
Where Are All the Fishing Pictures?
When I started looking through old photos for a picture to go with this story, I thought surely I'd find something that looked like fishing. I couldn't. For a story inspired by Fishing Day, there is remarkably little photographic evidence that anybody in my family ever fished.
What I found instead were pictures of us. Tents. Bikes. Kids. Family. People hanging around and being silly. I ended up putting some of those old pictures together into a collage for this story, and seeing them all in one place made something obvious: my pictures weren't about the fishing. They were about the people and everything happening around it.
The more I thought about it, the more appropriate that seemed. My brother probably remembered details about those fishing days that I barely noticed because fishing genuinely mattered to him. I was paying attention to something else. I remember being together. I remember the kids. I remember the ordinary things happening around whatever activity had brought us there in the first place. Apparently my camera was paying attention to those things too.
And maybe that's the funny thing about shared experiences. We can all be in the same place on the same day and come home carrying completely different memories. One person remembers the fish that finally bit. Someone else remembers what everybody ate afterward. A kid remembers playing with a cousin or something ridiculous that made everyone laugh. None of those memories is more legitimate than another. They're simply different pieces of the same day.
Why Roxy & Kylo Needed a Fishing Day
That's what I see differently now when I think about Roxy and Kylo at Whispering Willow Creek. They went there to fish. They had their poles, cast their lines and then had to do the thing fishing seems to require an awful lot of: wait. But while they waited, life kept happening. They spent time together, noticed what was around them and experienced the day beyond the activity that had brought them there. By the end of their Adventure, what mattered wasn't simply whether they caught something. It was their realization that “the best part was everything else we did while we waited.”
When we created Fishing Day, that line belonged to Roxy and Kylo. Looking back at my own family's summers, I realize how much it belongs to us too. My brother was the one who genuinely loved fishing, but his love for it became one ingredient in experiences the rest of us shared with him. I didn't have to become interested in fishing myself. I could appreciate that it mattered to him, even find him the perfect Christmas gift for it, while still having absolutely no desire to bait a hook. I participated, and I found the parts of the experience that I enjoyed. Years later, those are the parts I remember.
Little Moments Matter
We tend to recognize the big moments while they're happening. Birthdays, graduations, holidays and vacations come with plans, photographs and expectations that we're supposed to remember them. The little moments usually don't announce themselves that way. They're tucked inside ordinary days: a conversation while everyone is sitting around, something funny a kid does, everybody eating together, people finding ways to entertain themselves, or a photograph that doesn't seem particularly important when someone takes it.
Maybe that's why I couldn't find the fishing picture I thought I needed for this story. I was looking for proof of the activity when what I actually had were pictures of the experience. The photographs weren't concerned with what anyone caught. They captured the people who were there and pieces of the summer we were spending together.
That's also what I love about looking back at those summers now. We weren't trying to manufacture core memories for the kids. We were living. We were finding things to do, getting everybody together and having experiences. Some were probably more successful than others. Some moments were memorable for reasons nobody could have predicted. But enough of those ordinary days accumulated that, years later, they became part of what the kids remember about growing up and what all of us remember about being together.
Maybe that's the real invitation behind all of these summer Adventures. You don't have to know in advance which experience will matter most or which tiny moment someone will remember years from now. You just have to give life enough opportunities to happen. Go somewhere. Try something. Spend the day together. Participate. The memory can take care of itself.
What Stayed With Me
Fishing was my brother's thing. Camping was something our family did. I participated and found the parts of those experiences that were mine. Years later, when I went looking for evidence of the fishing, what I found instead was a collection of people, summer days and ordinary moments that had somehow lasted.
I couldn't tell you what anybody caught on most of those trips. But I can look at those pictures and remember that we were there together. I can see different summers, different stages of the kids growing up, and a family continuing to find ways to spend time with one another even as life changed. What seemed like another summer activity at the time became part of the collection of experiences we carried forward.
Maybe that's why Roxy and Kylo's Fishing Day feels so familiar after all. The fishing gave them something to do. Everything else gave them something to remember. The experience can be ordinary. The memory it becomes may not be.
What About You?
When you think about the summer things your family used to do together, what little moment from those days do you still remember?
