Fishing

Saturday March 14, 2009

[Note: Last weekend I had stopped by my Filipino co-worker Edwin’s house around noon time and asked him he wanted to take a ride out the point to go swimming. “Now?” he asked incredulously. Edwin has lived on the island several years. He explained, “The sun is too strong now, we must wait until 5:30 PM.” He is a wise man, Edwin.]

Not much more than twelve hours after returning from happy hours, by boss Haser, his friend Pannie, and I left dry land in a small motor boat, my stomach wasn’t quite feeling 100%.

Heading off in search of yellow-fin tuna and mahi-mahi with two men whose ancestors subsided from the bounty of the sea, set off a surge of excitement within me. We sped out of the lagoon towards the open waters that lay beyond.

There are no trees on the water and the clouds had taken the day off. It wasn’t long before my excitement was visited by Edwin’s voice repeating itself inside my head, “Now? The sun is too strong now; we must wait until 5:30 PM.”

Less than an hour into the trip, the sun had crawled its way under my shirt. The heat sucked the energy from my flesh. I was no match for the early afternoon equatorial sun. Drinking water was plentiful but it didn’t sit well in my stomach. I would have gladly thrown in the towel and conceded defeat, a man beaten by the elements, only my towel was far away on dry land.

Seasickness was a secondary concern. The up and down motion of the swells certainly didn’t help my physical condition but it didn’t seem too bad except for when we had to stop the boat to change lures. It was then that my stomach played upon an imaginary seesaw while the rest of my body only craved shade.

I didn’t know how long the outing was scheduled to last but the cooler of food sitting in the boat suggested that I wouldn’t have wanted to know. The thought of asking to be returned to the launching pad, from I could have easily called a cab, occupied my thoughts. I’m sure they would have, but I didn’t want them to waste either time or fuel.

One searches for fish by searching for birds. Sea birds feed on small fish just like bigger fish do. The type of bird indicates the type of fish. At a point when we seemed closer to the lagoon than we had earlier, I was about to ask to be returned to dry land. Before the words could leave my mouth, a flock of black birds was spotted. In hot pursuit, we eagerly turned away from the lagoon.

After I short while I knew that defeat had come. The heat delivered its knockout blow. Had there been a fat lady on the boat, she would have burst into song. Instead, the next sound to be heard was that of me throwing up over the side of the boat.

As my head hung over the Pacific Ocean as if it were a giant toilet bowl, a mahi-mahi seized the moment to strike. I felt the line I held in my left hand go taunt in a way it hadn’t all day (we fished just with lines, no rod and reel). I turned my head and saw
Pannie standing at the back of the boat pointing excitedly in the direction of my line.

In a sequence of events I don’t really recall, my line was transferred to Haser.
I returned to my prior activity as hand over hand Haser pulled the line in. The next time I lifted my head, my eyes fell upon a nice size mahi-mahi flopping around in the boat.

I’d like to say my story ends here. It would a nice spot to end. A happy ending one would say, unless, of course, if one were a fish. But my story continues, my experience not quite complete.

As you may have experienced in your own life, vomiting is often accompanied by the need to empty one’s bowels. I was on a motorboat! With my new boss! Not coming from a boating background, I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Coming from a different culture than my companions, I wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject. The Micronesians seem to be polite people, and I wasn’t quite sure what was the correct noun to use to describe “#2.”

“I feel a little better," I announced as my head returned from the outside of the boat, “but I could really use a bathroom.”

“No problem,” Haser informed me, “Pannie will come sit up here and you can go back there and balance yourself over the edge of the boat.”

As Pannie and I switched places and the boat gently rose and fell, I could only reflect on the fact that the Spivak family has never been known for its coordination and balancing abilities. We Spivaks can take a certain amount of pride in our cardiovascular capabilities (running and biking and such) but balancing is another thing. Had we been a circus family of tightrope workers and trapeze artists, the family line would have surely died out long ago.

I can balance a checkbook. I can balance work and family responsibilities. I can even balance my diet pretty well. I wasn’t so sure if I could balance on the balls of my feet with my backside handing over the boat’s back side as we rolled in the gentle waves.

As Haser and Pannie sat facing forward enjoying a snack, I said a short prayer asking that the ocean stay calm and that my boss not have to pull me, with shorts around my ankles, back into the boat. I fumbled with my drawstrings and firmly planted my toes.

Let me just end, dear friends and family, by saying that if you have the opportunity to take a yoga class and if that particular yoga instructor is inclined to incorporate balancing poses into the yoga routine, one should seriously consider taking it. As I learned today, it can come in handy in situations that you never would have expected.

Fate was more kind to me then it was to the mahi-mahi that shared our small quarters. Both the wind and the water stayed still.

To Mary and Sue, my yoga instructors for the past year and half in Salem, I say, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart but not from the bottom of the ocean. In dry clothes and with a body once again centered in the boat’s interior, thank you and Namaste.”