In
the Blood
A
friend's son, adopted shortly after birth, was a very successful high
school and college wrestler, and presently coaches wrestling. As an
adult, he initiated contact with his biological mother, meeting her
and her family for the first time since his first few days of life. In that rather large extended
family he found wrestling was the family sport. His mother's father
had been a coach, uncles had been wrestlers, and, unknown to him at
the time, my friend's son had coached his own second cousin. A
wrestling gene?
In
the eons-old question “Is it nature or nurture?”, this story tips
the scales in favor of nature, that hereditary disposition we are
born with which determines much of who we are, our athletic
preferences as well as our facial features. In the area of long-term
health and longevity, there is a significant hereditary component,
prompting experts in the field to humorously suggest that if you want
to live a long life, you should choose your parents wisely. But our
parents, and grandparents, perhaps give us more than healthy hearts
and strong bones. They may give us our passions as well.
Readers
of this blog know I am passionate about fishing. And my passion
pales in comparison to that of my brother's, who is probably not
reading this at the moment because he is off fishing somewhere. I've
written before about my life-long love of fishing*, but I've recently
made two interesting discoveries that have caused me to want to
revisit this familial trait and view it through the lens of heredity.
I'd been sorting through old papers and years of memorabilia, some
not mine, but old photos and clippings I brought back from my mom's
house a number of years back, when I was cleaning it out with the
intention of going through them later. Well, later had arrived, and
in a small white envelope with the printed return address of the
Herald Tribune (a long-running New York City daily newspaper that bit
the dust in 1966) I found a yellowed newspaper clipping from the same
paper. It was an obituary for my grandfather, my father's father, a
man I never knew, someone who had died five years before I was born.
It read in part:
Death
called on one of the finest characters we have had occasion to meet,
John Zima, who has been with the Herald Trib since March 1933. He
was well known to most all of the party boat operators from
Sheepshead Bay to Babylon and many of our metropolitan tackle
merchants. He passed away Monday afternoon in his 63rd
year. Funeral services will be held...
The
rest of the obituary continued on with the usual information of
times, dates, funeral home and church location, surviving family
members. What was not usual about my grandfather's obituary was this
death notice was embedded in a column in the sports section, entitled
Angler
and Hunter: Sportsmen's Needs by Jack Brawley. The
item about my grandfather was printed right
after the Jones Beach striped bass surf report (“...weighing 23 ¾
pounds, the other a 22 ½ pounder...taken on an eel rig...on a metal
squid...”) and then followed by a party boat report (“...250
mackerel...a mako shark...”). I assume there had been an obituary
somewhere in the usual section of the paper reserved for such
notices, but I found it significant that a fishing columnist found it
appropriate to put it in his column as well. The passion for fishing
my paternal grandfather had, to be known by boat owners and bait
shops from Sheepshead Bay to Babylon, a distance of almost 40 miles,
speaks of someone who did a LOT of fishing.
The
same obituary could probably have been written about my own father
five years later, his passion for fishing at least equaling if not
surpassing that of his father. Though I don't know how well known he
was in fishing circles on the south shore of Long Island, my father
owned two boats at the time of his death, and our house was still
filled with his rods, reels and tackle during my childhood,
eventually to be absorbed into the acquired fishing paraphernalia of
my brother and me. As I've written before, my mother and her father
did take my brother and I fishing as children, so I guess there was
some degree of nurture along with the predisposed nature in both of
us to fish. But in my continued sorting of old papers and
photographs, I came across a picture that I don't remember seeing
before, one that explains a lot, like why, sitting here writing this
blog post, I'm mostly oblivious to the five fishing rods quite
visibly leaning up against the wood stove in the family room, not bothered by the six
(!) tackle boxes nearby on the floor. In the picture, my father is
holding me, a very young child, about six months old. There is not
enough detail in the background to accurately determine where this
picture was taken, but it looks like it might be in my bedroom or the
living room of the house I grew up in. The significant detail, aside
from the father-daughter moment, is the three fishing rods standing
in the corner of the room, there because, well, why not? Living
room, family room, or baby's bedroom – if you are passionate about
fishing, your rods are always nearby...
Our
family fishing passion has appeared to skip our children's
generation, none exhibiting quite the same obsession as the
generations before them. Perhaps there will be grandchildren who
will leave rods and reels in random corners of their houses, scraps
of fur and feathers from fly tying scattered on their carpets.
(Guilty!) If not, that's O.K. Looking toward my children and
beyond, I'd like to think I've bequeathed other, more valuable
attributes than how to bait a hook or tie a Gartside Gurgler (though
these are valuable skills, too...). I want to be a healthy conduit,
passing on good spiritual and emotional as well as physical
characteristics to the generations following me. And if the fishing
gene - if there is such a thing - becomes dominant again in the midst
of those other good things, all the better. But for my brother and
myself, lovers of fishing that we are, we can turn and look back in
our hereditary line and confidently see we have chosen our father and
grandfather wisely...
Remind
me of this with every decision
Generations
will reap what I sow
I
can pass on a curse or a blessing
To
those I will never know
-from
Generations,
Sara Groves
If
you want your children to follow in your footsteps, you must be very
careful about where you put your feet. - Anonymous
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