I started tying off the lines before the sun even came up. My hands were too small for the knots, but I’d practiced in the garage every night since Dad got sick. By the third morning, the deckhands stopped hovering. I think they realized I wasn’t just playing fisherman—I was one now.

Dad’s been a lobsterman since he was sixteen. Same boat. Same dock. Everybody around here knows him. So when he got too weak to leave bed, I told him I’d go in his place.

He laughed. Thought I was joking.

But Mom didn’t.

She packed my lunch. Helped me find the old waterproofs that still kinda fit. “They’ll take care of you,” she said, brushing my hair down. “You’re his son.”

Most of them did.

The crew didn’t expect much, but I learned fast. Kept my head down. Didn’t complain about the cold. Got the ropes coiled tighter than half the guys twice my age. Old Mack even said I had my dad’s hands. That meant something.

But not everyone was happy.

Curtis—he’s been on the crew a few years—started calling me “the captain’s little shadow.” Said it with a smile, but it felt like a slap.

He “accidentally” knocked over my bait bucket. Rolled his eyes when I got the haul count right before he did. Once, when I beat him to cleaning the deck, he muttered just loud enough: “Kid’s not even supposed to be here.”

I didn’t say anything. Just kept working. That’s what Dad would’ve done.

Then this morning, the traps came up heavier than they’d been all week—and I screwed up trying to pull them in. The rope jerked, I slipped, and ended up flat on my back, wind knocked out of me.

Curtis stood there, arms folded, smirking like it was Christmas morning.

“See?” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “This is what happens when you play dress-up on a working boat.”

I could feel the eyes on me. The crew wasn’t saying anything, but I knew some of them were thinking it too. My chest burned—not from the fall, but from the shame. I started scrambling up, trying to pretend I wasn’t shaking.

That’s when the captain—Rory Keene, my dad’s best friend since high school—walked over, clapped a hand on my shoulder, and said:

“You’re right, Curtis.”

Everything froze. Even the wind seemed to stop for a second.

Curtis grinned, cocked his head like he’d won.

Captain Keene didn’t flinch. “You’re right. He is just a kid. So how’s it feel knowing he’s working circles around you?”

There was a pause. A beat. And then a low chuckle from Mack. Then someone else snorted. The tension cracked, and it broke against Curtis like a wave. His face twisted, and he turned away, but I’d seen it—the flash of embarrassment, the blow to his pride.

Captain Keene leaned in close to me. “Don’t let your footing mess up your head. You’re here for a reason. And you’re earning your place every damn day.”

After that, Curtis didn’t say much. Not to me. Not to anyone, really. He still glared sometimes, but the crew had made up their minds. I was one of them.

Two weeks later, we got news.

Dad had taken a turn. The kind you don’t come back from.

Mom called me while we were still at sea. I don’t remember how I got through the rest of the day. I just remember the crew letting me be. No jokes. No orders. Mack took over my traps without a word.

I got home just in time to say goodbye.

Dad looked so small in the bed. His skin was paper-thin, and his voice barely carried. But when he saw me, really saw me—salt-crusted hair, knuckles raw from rope, sea still on my skin—he smiled.

“You stuck with it?” he whispered.

I nodded. “Didn’t miss a day.”

He coughed, winced, then smiled again. “I knew you would.”

He passed that night.

The next morning, I woke up early out of habit. The silence in the house was deafening. Mom was asleep on the couch, tissues balled up in her fists. I stood there a long time, staring at the front door, at Dad’s old boots.

I didn’t want to go.

I didn’t want to face that deck without knowing he was home waiting.

But then I thought about the first time I saw him haul in a full trap. How his eyes lit up like a kid’s. How proud he was of his work. Of the sea. Of his name.

And I realized—if I didn’t go, Curtis would.

So I grabbed the boots.

The dock was quiet when I got there. The crew knew. They didn’t say much. Just nodded. One of them handed me a coffee. Another passed me a roll of tape for my fingers.

Captain Keene gave me the helm that day.

I told him I wasn’t ready.

He said, “Neither was your dad when he took it for the first time.”

It wasn’t perfect. I got us slightly off track. Took a minute too long lining us up with the buoys. But we made the haul. A big one.

By the end of the day, Curtis was the one coiling the ropes behind me.

He quit a few days later.

Said he wanted something more stable, more “professional.” Truth was, the crew had picked their side, and he didn’t like where he ended up.

Weeks passed. Then months. I stayed on.

Not out of obligation—but because the sea became mine, too.

One day, mid-haul, Mack handed me a folded piece of paper. “Found this cleaning out the cabin,” he said.

It was a note. From my dad.

“If you’re reading this, then I’m proud of you. Doesn’t matter what the others say. You’ve got salt in your blood now. You earned it. Make the name yours. Love, Dad.”

I don’t cry much. But I did that day.

Now, a year later, I’m the youngest full-time deckhand in our fleet. My name’s stitched into my oilskins. I took over my dad’s spot—not just the job, but the respect that came with it.

People still raise eyebrows when they see me walk the dock. Still mutter things like, “He’s just a kid.”

But the crew? They don’t see me that way anymore.

They just see a fisherman.

And every time I haul a trap, I ask myself—how do you honor a man who spent his life on the water?

You keep going.

You show up.

And you earn it.

If this story hit home for you, share it. Like it. Let someone know they don’t have to be the biggest, loudest, or oldest in the room to belong—they just have to show up and do the work. Who do you show up for?