In this story, I think hard about the thoughts and feelings of worms. I push it too far. More practically, I also try to help people looking for love, plus attempt advice about grandkids and expectations.

It all started when I presented my life-partner Alicia with a big idea: I should buy a boat.

Against the coming tide of AI, I want our grandsons to remember what it felt like to catch a fish on a mist covered lake in the early morning.

“Just a little boat,” I said, “with oars.”  “Only twelve feet long,” I told her. “I’ll just strap it to the top of our car,” I said.

I had found an old, dented boat on Facebook Marketplace for $125, only. Alicia responded with enthusiastic support. Maybe when she thought of me fishing, she imagined me out of the house for hours. For whatever reason, she was cheerfully on board from the start.

Turns out the Marketplace boat leaked. Amazingly, Alicia’s support did not waver when I bought a different boat. Even when it cost $4,250 more than what I had originally proposed. Even when that boat — simple, open, aluminum as it is — turned out not to be twelve, but instead sixteen feet long. Even when it had a motor — only a very small one, though. Even when I had to get a hitch installed on our car for $500. Even when the boat and its trailer consumed most of the space in our small driveway. 

Only one more thing, I wondered: Would she mind if I stored live bait – worms — in our refrigerator? I knew it was a big ask. I could see her slight intake of breath and quick swallow. Then she smiled, waved her hand, and said, “No problem.” Despite all this goodness on her part, on a morning in July, I lied to her. 

Alicia was still in bed when I opened the refrigerator, looked down, and saw two loose worms on the floor of the fridge. They had pressed themselves against the rubber sealant of the door, poised for escape.

I’ve been using the word “worms,” but these were nightcrawlers. They were like hang-over belly fat pressed into tubes. On a sidewalk after a night rain, under a streetlight, nightcrawlers may merely look like small, jointed sticks. Here in our fridge, they seem huge. Their meatiness folded over onto itself, so that each looked like a diagram of a large intestine. And those pointed heads! Weird little creatures.

If Alicia knew these beefy worms had been slip-sliding around in the stuff we eat, it would put her off food for at least a day. Or more. She wouldn’t be mad; she would be nauseous. I needed to spare her this.

I shook myself into action. She would be looking for coffee creamer in about ten minutes. I snatched these two runaways in my fingers, reached for their container, and saw the problem: I had left the edge of the tub slightly unbuckled. These two had found that sliver of a gap and made their break. 

You can’t blame a worm for trying. A hook, or drowning, or a fish’s gullet awaits them. Well alright — they can’t think or know. But, they seem to know it’s bad. The twelve of them, layered on top of each other in this four-inch-in-diameter circular tub. A worm is made to roam in the loam, and even though these were raised on a worm farm, they’re still striving for somewhere.

I pushed these two back into their tub and tossed the tub outside. Back at the fridge, I began moving everything around, checking for more escapees: I examined the bread (in a bag I had loosely tied the previous night); the tray of butter (the lid of which had fallen askew; the broccoli (because the previous night, I had not wrapped it well). 

Five minutes earlier than usual, I heard Alicia in our bedroom. Pivoting like a basketball player, I swiveled and snatched a roll of paper towels. I swung back and tried to think like a worm, imagining the path they would take from their tub to the base of the door. I wiped that path. I heard the bedroom door opening. I slam-dunked the towels, grabbed the bread, swiveled back to the counter, and postured carefully, making toast. We shared our “good mornings.” She opened the refrigerator for the creamer. All was well.

I went back to the fridge to get grape jam. There, another worm, in the exact same spot. 

In my favor: Alicia reads in the morning and is very focused. Which is why I could pick up this third squirming tube sausage, step outside, stuff it in the tub, all undetected. Which is why I could just — oh, you know, lah-dee-dah, sort of wander back into the kitchen, and hum-dee-dum go back to the fridge, and start shoving all the jars around and opening all the drawers. She just kept reading. 

Eventually, Alicia closed her tablet and went to take a shower. I kicked into full gear. I pulled everything out and set it all on the table. I grabbed a rag and dipped it in soapy water and washed everything: The shelves, the walls, the insides of the drawers. I re-loaded everything, trying to put things where they had been. I threw out the broccoli. I checked the butter again, this time for tracks (do worms leave tracks?). I examined the bread again, one slice of bread at a time. 

Alicia came out to make her lunch. She said, “Did you do something to the fridge? Everything is wet.”

“Yeah, I spilled some juice and tried to clean it up.”

“Oh. Um…OK.”

Yes. I lied. 

I would tell her, but timing is everything. That time was three weeks later. I told her while we were anchored out on the boat together. For this, I figured, we needed to be out of the house and away from our kitchen. We needed to have eaten food from our fridge for a few weeks without any disease. And I needed to make it harder for her to leave me; her, stuck on open water, was useful.

Yeah, she had known something was up that morning. She just didn’t even delve into it at the time. In our life together, she has seen how frequently I do strange things. These days, often she shrugs and doesn’t even bother asking. Out in the boat, she shook her head, gave me her “You did what?” look, and then started laughing.

Before the romantic advice of this little story, and before I tell how my idea with the grandkids turned out, here’s something I wonder about: In a dark refrigerator, how did those worms know where the door was? How do they want to be somewhere else? Why did they, all three of them, press themselves against the exit? Even a worm seems to know what freedom ought to be. 

We, too, are possessed by that one innate yearning: Freedom. Not man-made freedom, not the two-thirds freedom of a constitution, not the manipulated freedom dictated by the violent or the rich. This is Freedom for all, equally. Pure freedom of life and soul; freedom to be oneself, without fear or domination. Freedom like Narnia, where the trees dance through soil with their knobby, jointed roots, roaming free, and when all the creatures, at the culmination, go further up and further in – inside creation itself, running or swimming or flying, or, if I may, burrowing into the freedom of God. Whether or not we, here and now, yearn for such freedom and try to replicate it shows whether we, even as small creatures, think like God. At all.

To young people in the marketplace for lasting love: Yes, passion. But watch for things like generosity of spirit, kindness, and patience. And a sense of humor. Don’t settle for less. It will go well for you.

My grandkids, I am disappointed to say, don’t care much about fishing in the early morning mist. So much for my expectations. However, they do like when Alicia and I hook the trailer to the hitch and take the boat to a lake and tow them around with that little motor. We can’t go fast, but we laugh together in the sparkling sunshine as they float along on a used inflatable surfboard I found on Facebook Marketplace. The board leaks a little. We’re going with it.

Header photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash