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The
Day After Sam Rockwell and I Went Fishing PAGE
TWO: I briefly entertained the theory that the dream was actually about the real Sam Rockwell and his destiny as the one man I could love. Not only did he seem like someone who might agree to have "Double Dutch Bus" be the first dance at his wedding, it made sense that only the real Sam could survive the dream Sam, and it just seemed nice that someone should have to wrestle himself in an aluminum rowboat in the middle of a lake in order to win my heart. But Sam hasn't shown up at my door and so I have accepted the slightly more likely explanation that this dream -- in the way dreams do -- just borrowed his face from the corner of my brain where I keep things like Degrassi Junior High, Kerry 'The Claw' Von Erich, and all of the lyrics on Gordon Lightfoot's Compilation Album "Gord's Gold". And really, regardless of how Sam Rockwell got into my head, what matters is that I see past the borrowed face to who it really is that commands the demise of love. Because it is not Sam Rockwell -- real or imagined -- sitting at the stern of that aluminum boat; it is my nihilistic grandfather whose heart was broken by life's disappointments; it is my disappeared father whose heart was broken by his own disappearance; and it is my flightless mother, whose heart was broken by her own brain chemistry and regret. And all that heartbreak got folded up inside of me and so it is actually me sitting at the stern of that aluminum boat. It is me commanding the demise of love, because in the wake of this dream, I have continued to choose men I know will not survive Mr. Rockwell's sermons and it is in that act -- not the persistent recalling of the dream -- that I have bowed to the legacy of a heartbroken family. But what if, instead of accepting this dream as the immutable result of an unfortunate past, or conceding to it as the fateful orchestrator of a solitary future -- what if I draw my new ending not from the dream, but from its source? Because in the memory -- in my real life -- I bowed to nothing. In my real life, in what can really only be described as a deliberate act of optimistic defiance, I returned to Lake Sagamore with my broken-hearted grandfather day after day and summer after summer. And in what can really only be described as a great act of patience and faith, I continued to find great peace and great pleasure in all that silence, so many sermons, and with the exception of that one bass the length of my torso, very few fish. Surely, if I possess only half as much optimistic defiance, patience and faith in my present life as I did when I was nine, I can manage to alter the course I allowed this one ridiculous dream to set me on over a decade ago. And so I give up worrying about when and why Sam Rockwell and I go fishing. I give up looking for final and definitive victory. I do not need a man as evidence of my triumph over my heartbreak. That I cherish the memory of fishing with my grandfather exactly as it happened, and that I continue to cherish my grandfather for exactly who he was is evidence enough, of triumph enough. Should I someday fancy a fellow who is meant to survive Sam Rockwell, and should I soon after, for the second time in my life, have a dream about fishing, I suspect I will again be on Lake Sagamore in the Hudson River Valley, in my grandfather's cobwebbed aluminum row boat, with the splintery oars and the white fish sandwiches wrapped in very old waxed paper. And I suspect Sam Rockwell will again be admonishing me from the stern. But in this dream, I will see him for who he is and I will not sit idly; I will not surrender to the demise of love. In this dream, I will wrestle the lithe Mr. Rockwell myself and he will end up disappearing into the black water of Lake Sagamore and I will be left to fish in peace. And the day after that, I will stay in love. At
least through breakfast.
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And
at some point after turning thirty, the montage of romantic catastrophe
became exhausting and time consuming and sad, and I so decided to
climb back inside this dream to give it a better look so that I
could start to imagine a better ending. 
