Then I was whisked off by my ever-more-delightful family into the western night for a happy Thanksgiving weekend with the grandparents. The second annual pheasant hunt was afoot. We got six this year, and I cleaned my first bird, a surprisingly bearable experience. Though Uncle Paul washing his bloody birdhands off in the toilet bowl was a little less bearable.
Ah but the manliness of it all, the predation, the killing, the subsequent blood & feasting & football. The day Paul joined us we got 4 pheasants and the Huskers upset Colorado 30-3. It made me want to belch & howl & pummel my chest expansively all at the same time.
And in another vein it was so nice getting to reknow my brother & sisters. I feel Ed and I are closer than we've been in years, probably since our boyhood summers hunting butterflies together. My sisters are growing up too fast & I must face that. Lydia is a teenager now, is tall and beautiful, and there are no older brothers to beat up any evil-minded teenage boys (which is all of them) that may appear on the scene. Rebecca is not far behind. They are both transforming, and it is both exciting & frightening to watch.
And to this of course add love of my parents & grandparents & aunts & uncles & cousins as I come to understand them better and realize all those things that are so essentially them. Before going off to bed my grandpa walks around with his belt buckle undone, a thing which he has always done for as long as I can remember, except I never noticed until now that I do it too. How many more thing have they given me that I'm not even aware of yet? I too am essentially them.
Posted by Alan at November 30, 2005 12:59 AM