If there is one memory I have with my dad from my childhood, it’s playing baseball in the big front yard of the tiny, pre Civil War era house I grew up in. But if there is another, it’s fishing.
My dad has always loved to fish, for as long as I can remember. He would take me down to the dock at the lake when I was very little, then out in his jon boat when I was bigger, teaching me how to bait my line and cast. As a little girl I was obsessed with his tackle box, all the pretty lures tucked inside: iridescent greens and blues, bright pinks and oranges, all tasseled and feathered. He would tell me stories about my grandfather - an expert fisherman - teaching him to fish as a boy, while doing the same for me.
It was probably the first time that I recognized that there was knowledge there being passed down from one generation to the next; but also the first time I understood that there is some knowledge that can't be learned any other way.