Ever since my husband and I have been together (almost 25 years!) I’ve known that come fall, along with the trees changing colors, came hunting season. My husband has always hunted and he looks forward all year to spending some time with his son, communing with nature and hopefully being able to “bring home the bacon”.  I even told my doctor that I couldn’t have a non-emergency medical procedure done during hunting season because I couldn’t possibly ask my husband to give up his passion to take care of me. (He would though).

Here in Missouri, we have deer hunting seasons for bow, rifle and black powder. Each fall I know there will be at least two or more long weekends that I will be alone. When he was younger, my husband did all three types of hunting so he was gone a lot more then than he is now. That’s not all a bad thing. I do enjoy some alone time. It’s just a little quieter now that all my kids are grown and gone and I am alone in the house for the very first time, ever. Before, if my husband wasn’t home, I had between one and four children to help occupy my space and time. I don’t ever remember feeling alone all the years I wasn’t married, but being totally alone in my home is a different animal. I have a friend who lives alone and is scared of her own shadow. She keeps her house locked up tighter than Fort Knox and even walks around the house with a gun. I’d be more afraid I’d drop the gun or knock it off the table than I would be of something bad happening. And it’s not like she lives in a bad neighborhood. She actually lives a couple houses from where I grew up.

But I digress. This year his first hunting weekend was cut short because of his daughter’s memorial service. It might sound like a terrible thing to do, go hunting right after you bury your daughter, but he explained it well, that it was an opportunity for him to spend quality time with another one of his children and get to sit quietly, and alone. He admitted later that that first weekend he didn’t even take his gun out, only sat in the still and quiet, and cried.

He’s asked me on occasions to go with him. I would except for the fact that I don’t want to kill an animal; I don’t want to sit in the cold for hours on end and I certainly don’t want to get up at the buttcrack of dawn to do it. Other than that, I think it’d be great fun.

So our last two Mondays with Morie were spend in separate endeavors and hopefully, we’ll get back on track next week with a new adventure.