MARCH CHALLENGE|KEELEY SCHRODER|
Day 27: What did you want to be when you grew up?
March Madness Challenge: A Fisherman
When I left the safety of my surroundings to find the other side of reality, I found the majority of mankind considered cash, and the ownership of property conducive to their own well-being.
I’m not a fool, I understand this need for wealth. It is one way for a man to enhance the quality of his life; perhaps so that he, too, can have time to enjoy his family, and the ocean. I have heard it said, perhaps by a fisherman, that man doesn’t have gold — the gold has him.
By the time I was twelve years old, I was adamant I would become a fisherman, go out with dad, and it stayed this way until I became sixteen. The richness of my father’s life had nothing to do with money. I can say this with utmost honesty. He lived month-to-month on what he earned from the sea, doing what he loved to do, and many times I remember hearing mum sobbing about the bills coming in.
Dad didn’t want fishing to be the life I lived, perhaps he knew I wasn’t born to it, didn’t have his genes, or his stomach, strength, and fearlessness.
At sixteen I was damned if I was going to college.
We had a friend who had a small Cessna 152, and since I was thirteen, he had been taking me up with him, and soon I was taking the controls. He told dad I had a natural ability and understood the concept of flight.
Dad signed me up for flight school.
If dad didn’t believe I had the steel to be a deep-sea fisherman, I would go one better. I would fly above his head, protect him the way his love had protected us. Four years after leaving the island, I qualified as a pilot in the RAF. 9 years later I became a rescue helicopter pilot, flying sea-kings for the Coast Guard.
As a young man it had been a dream of mine to one day fly above my father’s head. Be there for him should anything ever go wrong. It never did. I’ll always be eternally grateful for his safety, and the safety of the crewmen who were his other family.
I was raised by fishermen, and it was these men who taught me that life is on loan. As mere mortals we do not own our next smile, but we should learn to appreciate it. It is a priceless thing.
There are men in the world I rate as hundred-point-men. Men I have admired, and trusted; men I have never met, but read about, and men, a few at least, who managed to catch me, and clip my ear for my cheek.
If my life has any value, it is only in the appreciation others have for me. If they love me, like me, wish me well, then my life is rich enough.
You see, I’m first my father’s son.
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