Fish aren’t really a pet you get close to. In the dead of winter, I see my forty assorted goldfish and Koi hanging motionless in their 3,400-gallon pool, barely twitching a fin. They drift in the water if they move at all, dormant and paralyzed with cold. I think they look at me as I move around the pond, but I’m not sure they are looking at me. Usually, when they see me they turn the other way. Eye contact is not a strong suit with fish, but my expectations may be a bit high. In the winter, I barely make eye contact myself.
Sometimes a goldfish will wander too close to the edge of the pond where the ice forms faster. They must nod off, because I’ll occasionally find one completely frozen and encased in ice and not come out of it until the pond thaws. Then it takes me all summer to gain their trust so that they will eat out of my hand again. Now they wouldn’t approach me if their life depended on it. All trust has disappeared until the water temp rises in the Spring, and their designer food is handed out again.
During our Midwest winters, people act much the same way. We all take on that catatonic fish stare and have a cast of pale orange because our healthier red blood cells go on vacation. They go south like Snowbirds, where they resurface in Tampa for spring training with the Riskateers Baseball Team. For the blood cells that linger behind, they float in a state of suspended animation between the surface and the bottom, between heat and cold, and barely protected by a wafer-thin oxygen layer.
“Do you want to meet for coffee?” I asked an old friend recently.
“Thanks, no,” he answered, “let’s wait until Spring and get a cookie with it.”
“Oh, do they not have cookies now?” I inquired.
“Yes, they do, but they are all stale,” he said in a hushed whisper, as if he had just come from a funeral march. In his defense, he was in a fog, and the light was just barely managing to squeeze through his eye slits, his deep freeze. He softly repeated “they are all stale,” as he shuffled away with one shoelace untied.
That was the sign. The shoelace.
I watched it trail behind, snaking across the floor. I had a sad feeling come over me. My gut told me that his laces would not become an integral and working part of his shoe again until spring. The shoe was too far south. To bend over and tie it would take great fortitude on his part. He would have to go deep. It would take blind faith. It would mean a decision, a soulful commitment to face his doubts head-on despite his own lazy character. If he could try to bend over, his determination might take the lead, and then, bending over would be worth it. Tying the shoe would be worth it. The effort would result in a knot, and that knot would hold. It would take sheer willpower. His effort would define the knot he tied, and it would be solid and durable.
Winter tests this kind of inner fortitude around here. We are still in the midst of our drift, and we need to be solid. We need to be able to look deep inside ourselves, tie our knots so they hold, clean up our sloppiness. If we do, our character will sit up straight, it will be refreshed, then refresh our faith for the rest of January, February, and roll with momentum into March. Now we need to stoop over, get low, say a prayer. Tie our knots so they hold.
Then one day soon, we will walk outside, make eye contact with our fish, and notice they are moving, they are rising, and the water is stirring.