He's Still At It

I've loved watching Caleb play in the creek since he was about four years old. He was quick with a net then, and persistent too, trying again and again and again to catch crayfish and little minnows. Seth would follow him, usually carrying a bucket for Caleb to transfer his finds into.

Over the July 4th weekend we spent a long afternoon at a park near where we used to live when the kids were little. It has a nice wide, shallow creek that Caleb and Seth loved to hunt for critters in when they were little guys. When we first arrived there last weekend, Caleb played it cool, sitting with the adults while the younger kids went into the creek. But soon after I mentioned that there were shorts in the car he could change into from his jeans, he made his way down to the creek and the next thing I knew he had procured a net from someone and was hard at the business of catching things in the water.
Gwen and Caden followed Caleb through the creek, marveling at his finds and carefully keeping them for him in an empty juicebox with the top torn off.

In the fall of 2007 I wrote a blog post about Caleb catching little sand crabs on the beach, and how seeing him revel in this activity as a teenager gave me a glimpse of the little boy that still lives inside him. I felt that same way last weekend... he still has some little boy urge to capture a living thing out of the water. He loved it as a preschooler, and he loves it still.

I hope someday I will have the privilege of seeing him take his own hopeful little boy down to the water with a net.