Summer always reminds me of stinkbait. Every year around this time, my grandfather, affectionately known as Bubba, takes his post on the back porch swing and spends a few hours rolling balls of rancid I don't know what into tasty catfish treats. I've become immune to the smell, having caught wiffs of it from the age of five. What I'll never understand is that my family, just like about everyone else in the South, is willing to eat the fish that eat the stinkbait. Bottom-feeders, namely catfish, can't resist the stuff. My Bubba and I use the stinkbait with rods-and-reels, trotlines, and most successfully, on jugs.

To make our fishing experience even more southern (i.e. redneck), we save two liter soda bottles and paint them neon orange. When we have enough, we attach long and sturdy strands of rope to the bottles' necks and, at the end, tie an enormous, savage looking hook. At the end of the hooks, stinkbait. Or some small, unfortunate fish. But I have to say, I prefer the stinkbait. We always put the jugs out after the sun goes down and check them the next day before the sun comes up. And we are nearly always successful. Stinkbait attracts the most attention. We regularly catch 20 pound catfish. We can always tell how big the fish is by the way the jug bobs up and down in the water. We've caught a few fish so large that we've had to chase the jugs down in our Army green flatbottom boat. There's always celebration from my cousins and aunt when we get back to our campsite and sarcastic comments from my Nana.

I have no idea what goes into stinkbait. From the smell I would venture to guess it's some sort of expired dairy trifectta like rotten milk, cottage cheese, and bad yogurt. There's probably more, but in this situation, I think it's best that I don't know. I do know that I love all of the memories that stinkbait has created for me. I'm married now, and my husband hasn't ever dealt in stinkbait. I hope that I can take what I learned about fishing from my Bubba and teach my family. I want to make lasting memories for Brian and our potential children, even if they do stink.

I have forever felt that everyone around me is dying and I am next. First it was my mother. I was only three, but I can remember her hands. Long fingers with short nails and cracked, peeling cuticles. Small sores where she nervously picked calluses. Her hands were like mine. Then there was my dad. I was six, and I still couldn’t say how old he was. They have been mysterious to me for so long. They only live in the minds of those that aren’t willing to tell their stories. But I can tell. I can tell everything I remember and embellish the parts that I don’t. I feel like my mother’s twin, like I know her because, in some ways, I feel like I am her. That’s why it was so hard for my grandparents to raise me. I was stubborn and belligerent at times, impossible to reason with. And I look just like her. That’s the hardest part for my family. I have the same espresso brown hair with the same wily kinks and frizz. I have the same alabaster skin that burns too easily. If AIDS hadn’t killed her, melanoma might have. I have the same hips and thighs, the same strong arms. I don’t have her eyes. That was something that our maker reserved only for her, and I am jealous. My mother’s eyes were coal black and soft. I inherited something in between my father’s baby blues and momma’s doe-like gaze. That’s it. That’s all I can say about her, other than the stories I have heard from my Nana, and they are very few.

I have more memories of my daddy. There are some I would like to forget, like all the times I witnessed a virus destroy the strongest man I had ever known. There wasn’t a time when I knew my daddy that we wasn’t sick, but, as is the case with HIV/AIDS, it took years for his symptoms to grotesquely reveal themselves. I know very little about his background, about his childhood. I do know that it was difficult. He was the third child in a poor family from Oklahoma. His father was, from what I’ve heard, angry and usually drunk. My daddy, though he inherited the same relationship with booze that his father had, was loving. He loved me with tough love, and if he were here today I’d have to hug his neck for it. I remember his old blue pickup and the way he would play classic rock over the stereo, windows rolled down, aviator sunglasses always on. He taught me that police don’t like rock music and it’s always best to turn the radio down if you pass a cop. He made me feel like a rebel. It really was me and daddy against the world. And he had so much of the world to fight. He fought its addictions, its hatred and ignorance for the disease that tormented his body, but he was always strong. I watched him do pushups and sit-ups every night. I sometimes joined him. Then he’d either pick up his guitar and play for hours or sit down on the couch to watch the Discovery Channel with me, a bag of Lay’s, and a jar of Pace. My father was like a modern-day cowboy. But even cowboys get sick, and eventually I was too much to handle. I moved in with my Nana and Bubba when I was five, and my daddy moved in with his mom at the age of forty-two. He was still my daddy, though. Strong and loving. As he got sicker, he taught me about mental strength, how it’s more important to develop courage and will. He taught me that I would have to face hardships for the rest of my life with or without him. He taught me that I could pity myself or I could just accept whatever came at me with dignity. Don’t blame anyone else and forget about being angry over something that I can’t change. My daddy didn’t explain these lessons to me. He had taught me to be intuitive and to observe the world around me. I watched my daddy as he got sicker and learned all of these things from his actions and demeanor.

Six years isn’t long enough for a daughter to know her daddy, and three certainly isn’t enough for a daughter to know her mother. That’s why I write about them from time to time. That’s why they show up in my fiction, masquerading as characters within the plot. Someone has to tell their stories so that they can continue to live and be known, at least in small ways. And before anyone else reads this, I have to send up a little prayer asking that they please understand that no matter what I have to say about them, I love them, strengths, flaws, and all.

So, after much hulabaloo (sp?) about which template to choose for my blog, I finally decided to use my orignal choice. So much for being original. I do have to thank Jacob, though, for putting up with my indecisiveness.

So now that I have a blog, and now that I have all of two followers (very important followers, I might add), people can read my writing. This is a big deal, for me anyway. We're talking about me, the senior undergraduate who completely screwed up a conference presentation because I just could not make myself read my term paper. I mean, this is the thing. When people read my writing, I feel naked. I feel like my writing defines so much about who I am. My writing, even if it's fiction, reveals personal secrets. And now, I have a blog. I am voluntarily publishing my thoughts on the Internet for all to read. Well, at least Jacob and Jordan, anyway... So, now I'm asking myself, "why blog?"

I need to blog because I need to overcome this (ir)rational fear. What I want more than anything in the world is to write, and not only that, but to write things that people read. I'm hoping that blogging will help me build courage (oh, no, now Jacob is coming ever so close to my computer, and I'm tempted to minimize the screen, but he's just going to see it anyway, oh, god. good. he left. now he's back. okay. I think he's really gone) to let people read my thoughts and even criticize my writing if they want. What I have to do is learn to do this for myself. I have to write for myself, because I want to, because I need to, because I have to. Because I love to.