The lake is why Mema and Grandpa moved here in the first place. After a lifetime working on plane engines at Tinker Air Force Base, Grandpa wanted nothing else but to sit in a motorboat in the middle of nowhere and fish. When I was little, he used to take me with him. We had a special little chair we’d strap into the middle of the boat, and I had my own fishing pole. It was red and had Big Bird on it. We got it at the general store for a dollar. We would leave before the sun came up and sit out there in the quiet. I was his favorite fishing buddy because I’d had my whole life to practice sitting still.

Catfish was the only thing we ever caught. Grandpa would pull them in for us. Their long whiskers would whip against the side of the boat when they came up, shiny and dark, from the water. I’d squeal a little if one of them brushed against my leg in the bottom of the boat.

We’d fill buckets up with lake water and take them back home alive. When I asked Grandpa why, he said, “You want them swimming until they hit the pan, baby girl. Then you clean ’em and fry ’em up right.”

But every now and then there was a little one, and he’d let me keep it as a pet, swimming around and around in that bucket, until all the others disappeared. Eventually we’d take it back to the lake.

“Live to see another day,” he’d say, and we’d salute as its tail disappeared under the water.

These are the things I want to remember. These are the things I don’t want him to forget.

It’s twenty-eight degrees out on January 2 and nobody’s fishing. The lake is big and dark and still. But if I lean over, I can still spot the red buoys, like inflated balloons in a line on the water, that mark off the swimming hole.

When Mom and I pull into the parking lot of the middle school, I see it’s almost full. The teachers had to come in to get their classrooms ready for tomorrow. Just the thought of tomorrow makes me want to hit the automatic locks. This school is tiny, like old-timey schoolhouse tiny, not much bigger than the church. It’s brick, like everything else, and there’s a playground next door because the elementary school is right behind it.