We heard the familiar pit-a-pat of feet on the wooden stairs on Austin’s first morning at our house. Art and I looked at the early hour on the clock. Austin, up so early?
“What are you doing up already?” I asked.
“I’m going fishing with my dad” he told me. “Morning is when the fish are biting.”
I remembered last year’s frustrating attempts to catch a fish because of the line getting tangled in the low-lying trees around the lake. Now at 7 years old, Austin was more determined than ever to catch something. (Jess had taken him the Sportsman’s Warehouse in the Outlet Mall to buy lures and live bait.)
Eating a bowl of “Grandma’s Granola” I took in his tall thin figure and the neatly cut short haircut. He looked grown up, all boy, and handsome with his piercing blue eyes. Where did the little boy with the head full of curls go?
Austin and Hayden headed across the street to Biltmore Lake to a spot I had scoped out without any interfering shrubs or branches. Before I could get dressed to follow and watch, I had a text ”we caught one” along with photos proving it. “We caught another one” came a second text. Austin’s visit to Biltmore Lake was off to a perfect start.
During his two weeks here, he had a catch of nine fish! This is something he won’t forget. Austin learned to take each fish off the hook and put them back in the water gently. All nine fish came from Biltmore Lake because the attempts to catch something in Lake Powhatan, a Recreation and Campground nearby, failed.
***
“Grandma, can I have a peach?” I peeled and sliced a South Carolina peach which Austin inhaled as the sweet juice ran down his chin.
“I didn’t know you liked peaches,” I said. Every time we came back to our house he asked for a peach. When given the choice of my homemade popsicles he chose Peach over Strawberry. Peaches became the snack of choice as we replenished our supply from the Western Carolina Farmer’s Market every few days.
“I love peaches too,” I told him. “We only get these special ones in July so it’s good you are here now. Now whenever I eat a peach I will always think of Austin.
***
“That was a great show,” Austin told his mom the morning after we had been to the Brevard Music Center.
It was Austin’s first live classical music concert. It’s unusual to see children at the summer Brevard concerts. We weren’t sure he would like it, much less sit quietly through an evening of classical music. Austin takes violin lessons in Washington DC, so Art and I chose this concert because of the American violin soloist Anne Akiko Meyers, who played a Beethoven violin concerto.
As the lights dimmed and the concert, conducted by the famous and flamboyant Keith Lockhart, began, I glanced two seats over. Austin sat with his legs crossed focused on the violinist in a long red dress playing a 1741 violin. It was clear he had never seen anything like this. At intermission, we wandered outdoors on a beautiful summer evening to stretch our legs and look for ice cream.
When the second part of the program began Austin was tired. He moved down to sit by me as there were empty seats in front of us. I wondered if he would last through Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. Jess distracted him for a while with a phone and dimmed screen. But he came back to life in the energetic fourth movement. He was astonished watching Keith Lockhart, dramatically throw himself into his conducting as he jumped up and down on the podium. The symphony ended with a roar of applause from the audience as Lockhart took his bows drenched in sweat.
As we walked out, Austin commented on the conductor’s dramatic movements.
“He looked like he was doing karate or taekwondo,” he said to me. He had never seen anything like it.
On the drive home to Asheville, we praised him for being such a good listener, while we adults celebrated a new classical music lover into the family. Jess and Hayden were thrilled, and our reward was making the right choice in planning the Brevard outing for all of us. It was an unforgettable evening.
***
“Can I swim out to the raft?” Austin asked every time I took him swimming in the lake. With life jacket on, Hayden first took him out in the deeper part of the lake and taught him to jump from the raft. It took several tries because Austin is cautious about trying anything new. Within a half hour he was climbing up the stairs onto the raft and confident about jumping off. He wanted to do it nonstop.
Distracting him to stay in the shallow water with a ball, frisbee or water guns, I told him he couldn’t go into the deep water unless his mom or dad were with him. Being social as he is, he looked for a friend or a group of kids playing and simply joined in. Sometimes he found a friend to squirt water guns with or throw a ball to. Other days kids came to the beach with their own friends, and he was ignored. Then I suggested building something in the sand.
Castle building is one of Austin’s specialties. Once he starts, he can spend hours digging moats, making turreted walls and an entire array of buildings. His concentration is amazing. He is distressed when his “work of art” is finished and someone comes along and without noticing, steps on it.
***
I miss our game playing evenings now that Austin has gone home. Dragonwood, the “roll the dice” and card game I bought him, became a favorite for all of us. As we learned the rules, we had many fun nights trying to capture the Blue Dragon and get the highest number of point so we could win.
Austin is still fiercely competitive as we experienced playing Monopoly on the nights he stayed with us. “I have a strategy and I always win,” he told us with confidence. It becomes problematic when he is on the verge of losing. He will negotiate for properties he didn't buy or raid the bank for more money…all against the rules, of course. But we let it pass and end the game, hoping that with time he will learn not to take it so seriously and be a better loser.
***
Art ,who is passionate about his stamp collection, couldn't get Austin the least bit interested.
“I collect Pokémon cards”, was Austin’s response. He brought out his wallet of ‘special cards’ to show us. Of course, we know nothing about Pokémon and the cards. One afternoon he had a Zoom meeting for an hour with the Pokémon Club from the Labyrinth Game store near his house in Washington DC. He sat with his iPad for an hour at our dining room table interacting with fellow Pokémon collectors and a leader discussing details of various cards. It’s all Greek to us…
Austin did have fun helping Art with the daily crossword puzzles he loves to do. He found some clues he thought Austin might know. When he got the right answer, he was ecstatic. Austin would pick up the half-finished puzzle on the coffee table and take it to Art to ask him if he could give him some more clues to guess a word. How many seven-year-olds want to try out the New York Times puzzles, I wondered. And yet Austin loves facts and words, a good combination for solving crosswords.
***
“Remember when we saw the bear over there?” Austin said pointing out the window. We were driving through the Biltmore Estate to take him for a bike ride on the bike trail. We had done the same thing last year, and in a field along the entrance road we had seen a large bear. There were many cars along this same road stopped while watching.
I suddenly had a new insight. Austin is now at an age when he remembers things we have done in the past. That feels almost like a milestone. I thought of the seven summers that Austin has spent at Biltmore Lake with us and know that four or five of those years he doesn’t remember because he was too young. Now I think of the concert we went to at Biltmore, the nine fish he caught in the lake, the rousing Dragonwood games, and jumping into the water from the raft. It’s satisfying to think that he’ll remember some of this in months and perhaps years to come.
***
Austin has gone home now. When I get up each morning, I still listen for him coming down the stairs. As I continue to enjoy South Carolina peaches, I think of him as I peel one or two daily. Our evenings are quiet without Dragonwood, Monopoly or Clue. All are memories that I will treasure until we do it all over again next year.
Thank you for capturing another amazing summer in Asheville. We had such a great time!
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