Her Small Sea
Ruth Myra Bayer
Word Count 1208
We went to the water with my mother. She was a fisherwoman in another life, I think. In this one, she was a loving wife and adoring mother. She learned to fish from her father and was at peace drifting on the waves, looking out at the line of horizon, comforted by its constancy. It did not ask much of her, but to stay afloat and to return.
Mom would drive north, with my little brother, Markie and me, to Milton, Vermont, where, for us, Lake Champlain was just a semi-circle of bay, down the dirt drive, to the small camper my parents owned. There was a tiny world inside and the cobalt blue lake a few feet away. Every year, as we grew out of last year’s sneakers, Mom cut the fabric in the toe ends so we had sandals for the stony beach there. We stored them, with the fishing gear, in an old school locker that fit tightly between two birch trees.
When we stood in the shallow water, minnows swished around our ankles, while our shoes sank in the oozy bottom. Mom swam in the inlet with us, seaweed brushing our bellies. She carried us, light weights on her back in those days. I didn’t like the tickle of star grass and pondweed, but in the summer heat, the cool lake waters invited us in. We would screech at the tiny currents, changing from warm to cold step by step. We put our heads under all at once to see the blurry underneath and blew bubbles, our eyes bulgy like a bluegill.
While Mom made lunch, my restless little brother and I skipped flat stones from the water’s edge. We leaped from rock to rock, pretending the sand was lava beneath us. Mom called to us to turn over the rowboat. We were wary of what might be under there. She had upended it once and a skunk ambled out, oblivious to her thankfully.
The little row boat held the three of us. Mom gave us worms, fat and slick, to put on our hooks. I didn’t mind holding them but I didn’t like the juicy blood that oozed between my fingers when the point caught. Markie squealed, “It’s so gross and cool.” I preferred the possibility of triumph, catching a bullhead catfish or, more likely, a smallmouth bass. I liked to lean the rod lazily against the side of the boat, put my leg across the reel, just in case, and skim my hand across the lake’s dark ripples. Sometimes the waiting, staying still, was too much for us. “Just a few more minutes,” Mom would tell us, those minutes having already passed several times.
Mom’s body was round and seemed strong. We couldn’t see her illness; she kept it under the surface. She loved to cast her line as far as the arc of her arm could reach. She would sit on the middle bench, like a queen on a throne, relaxed. She loved the lake most when it roiled a bit, reminding us that we were in its oblivious embrace. The tipping and swaying scared us. “Mommy, we should go in. There’s gonna be a storm,” I worried.
“No storm yet, kids. Look out there. No clouds even, none at all. It’s just the wake from a boat, or maybe a storm working its way in,” she reassured us. Sometimes she teased us and rocked the boat back and forth a little. Mark and I would scream and giggle, grabbing the sides quickly. We weren’t that far from the shore and could swim. I don’t think she would have minded falling out of the boat into the blue.
When Mom’s father was alive, Grandpa George would take us to fish in the deepest waters of Lake Champlain in his big outboard motorboat. We loved it when he drove fast, wind catching in our hair, the tiny stings of spray on our faces. Mom caught an eel on the end of her rod one sunny day. It was a sickly yellow-grey, long and slithering. I stepped back to get further away. The hook stuck in its maw and it writhed like parade bunting. With his big fleshy arms, Grandpa managed to detach the eel with a long broom pole, and it belly-flopped into the dark waters. He put his arm around Mom, “Don’t worry, Helen, the next one will be a real fish.” They laughed loud at this.
Catching a fish, no matter its size, thrilled us. We usually brought in a half-dozen yellow perch and my mom cleaned them on the flat of the rocks. With agility, she sliced open the fish on either side of the dorsal fin, set aside the two-chambered heart and the head, and bagged the yellow-white meat to fry in bread crumbs at home. Sometimes I felt bad for the fish, watching this gutting, but my mom seemed careful, choosing to hold each one gently in her thick hands first, before placing it on the stone for cutting. She knew the fish better than I did.
Eventually, we went less and less. We became teens, too busy for fishing and frog watching. We just wanted to talk to our friends on the corded phone.
Mom was slowing down, her body aching. We could see it now, her gait careful and her body in periodic jags of distress. She swam in a local pool in the summer, deliberate, sluggish strokes, a few laps at a time. The water was both exercise and solace. No one told us what was wrong and we didn’t know how to ask. We could feel a loosening, like a mooring slipping from its hold.
In the spring, Mom hauled us out to the camp, against our will. I read a book in the sun and ignored everyone. Mark threw rocks into the lake, letting his anger thud. On the way, Mom had bought bait worms. She dragged the boat into the shoals by herself and lifted her body into the middle seat, heavy like an anchor. Mom’s body then was engulfed in lumps of fluid, effusion surrounding her joints. We could see these springs, sacks of tacky liquid, pushing against her bones. She rowed out wearily, as if weighing the water with each turn of the oars, and cast her line. The filament arched low and plunked. The fish left her alone. She wasn’t far away, but she had left us on the shore. She sat for a long time, at ease on her small sea, less encumbered in the currents.
The only consolation is that we stayed up late, like we were grown-ups. We roasted marshmallows on the hibachi, sat in the dark and watched the fireflies, their rice paper wings dreaming in the night.
On a sparkling morning in May, when my brother and I were in school and my dad had gone to work, she returned to our tiny inlet, and took her own life. Sun on her skin, waves gently sounding her descent.
We didn’t return to the camper ever again. I wonder sometimes if my mother is there still, swimming among the olive-green weeds, in between the sunfish and our sunken skipping stones.
Ruth writes about family, adoption, mothering, Palestine, books, and capers. She lives not far from the ocean in Massachusetts with her partner, two kids and two ornery rescue cats. She is currently in the Essay Incubator at Grub Street. Her personal essay “Close By” was included in the anthology, An Adoption Reader: Birth mothers, Adoptive Mothers, and Adopted Daughters Tell Their Stories.” Ruth was a long-time elementary school teacher in Massachusetts and directed an elementary school French program in Vermont. She sometimes dreams of living forever so she can read all the books.