The shuffling feet in the hallway outside our bedroom door this morning was my son and youngest grandson heading out the door to go hunting. All three of my son’s kids are hunters. They also like to fish. The fabric of their lives are interwoven around those two activities. They’ve done them all with their dad. Add to that their incessant need to excel in every sport imaginable and it is no wonder they seldom have time at home. They are always on the go.
Intermittently, across the passage of time, Craig missed large chunks of their lives serving Uncle Sam in faraway dangerous places. He has taken it all in stride and maintains one of the most positive family orientated mindsets of anyone I know. It’s all about his kids.
Craig thinks he should be a candidate for “parent of the year”. He sums it up this way: “I keep letting my kids shoot bigger deer than any I’ve ever shot.” Of course, the kids have the drill down to three-part harmony. “We eat what we shoot”. Okay, so I’m collecting grandchildren who excel at every sport including hunting.
Just to make it perfectly clear, I own an over-and-under shotgun and I’ve shot some skeet in my lifetime. However, it’s been a long-long time since any of that has taken place. If memory serves me correctly, there is a skeet shooting range on the base at Camp Pendleton.
Of course, Jake who turns eleven next month, has yet to add a shoulder mount to the family collection. Horns are in plentiful supply at their house, but a trip to the taxidermist for a shoulder mount has only fallen to Jake’s two older siblings. Both Craig and Jake are of the mindset, that today is the day for Jake.
The two went hunting yesterday and took my truck to drive the 20 miles where they plan to hunt. Craig, joker that he is, wanted to know if I had a couple of packages of Cheetos that he and Jake could eat in my truck? He knows full well that I have a “no eating” policy in my truck. The same is true for the General’s car for that matter.
Since he brought the subject of my truck up, why not clarify how the truck is to be used. Craig assured me that off-roading wasn’t on his agenda. I clarified that I don’t drive a truck with scratches. When they returned late yesterday, Jake was pretty impressed with my truck. It felt brand-new to him. Of course, he knows that when the truck gets 40k on it, I will get another one. He thinks that’s crazy, but he has been unduly influenced by is dad.
We had dinner last night at my daughter and son-in-law’s. The meal was exceptional and so were some of the video clips my daughter played back for our viewing. Of course, they all revolved around her niece and two nephews as well as dear old dad. Okay, so I don’t hunt. I don’t fish. I don’t play sports. I don’t do much of anything other than standup comedy. How I keep showing up in family videos, I don’t know.
Last night, Jenna and her mom talked about a shopping trip into Austin today. She needs a dress for the prom. She needs a what? Somehow, I’m more comfortable with her wanting a new deer rifle than a dress for a prom. Of course, the prom won’t take place until the end of the school year, but now is the time to start looking.
Girls are weird. We have a couple of the General’s “formals” in a suitcase in our garage. I don’t know if I’ve ever opened the suitcase or seen the formals. If she wore them to a prom, it wasn’t with me. Do we need to keep them? Duh! Of course, we do. For what, I don’t know.
Last night, I mentioned to Jenna that if it had been up to her, Jake would have been a baby sister, rather than another brother. When Becky went for the ultrasound to determine the baby’s gender, it was a family excursion. It was in the doctor’s office that Becky shared the news with her family. Jenna and William were going to have a little brother.
Through a veil of tears, Jenna asked “Why?” Why didn’t her parents make a girl instead of a boy? Jenna was more than a little teary eyed. She was extremely disappointed and crying. Becky explained to Jenna that God decides those matters rather than the parents. Jenna replied: “Then God cheated us.”
Seriously, where would this family be without Jake? He was doing stand-up comedy from the very start. Like I said, I awakened several times through the night with reflections from yesterday. In a nightmare of sorts, I dreamed that the General and I had another child. From day one, the new kid spoke in complete sentences. It was absolutely amazing to hear a one-day-old child taking. I awakened in a cold sweat. Thankfully, it was a dream. With grandkids, you can send them home when you need a break. Of course, they’ve never stayed long enough that we really needed a break.
Of course, I remember that after buying my last new truck, we were taking the kids home. Jenna, complained of being hungry. I stopped at a service station/grocery to get her something to eat. I explained that she’d need to come inside the store with me and that she’d need to eat whatever she selected outside the truck. She wasn’t good with that. She was going to eat in the truck.
Okay, so I have the wherewithal to be more hard-headed than my grandchildren. I stayed calm. I didn’t raise my voice. I explained again the ground rules for riding in granddad’s truck. I didn’t waiver. Neither did Jenna. I figured fifteen minutes was more than ample time for her to decide if she was hungry enough to eat outside my truck. She wasn’t that hungry, so we moved on down the road. Consequently, I won that round.
All My Best!
Don