Hunting and Gathering

So. The new bow works. There is the body of a doe, skinned and gutted, on ice somewhere in the garage. Mr. Moon is very smart in that he does not ask me to participate in the deer hunting process AT ALL. He doesn't say, "Come look at my dead deer!" He doesn't ask me to hold the flashlight while he skins it. He does not ask me to bury the guts. In fact, he allows me to pretend that he came upon the deer meat, all wrapped in white paper and labeled "back strap" while in the woods.
He even washes his hunting clothes himself.

This is a good man.

And I try to reciprocate by cooking his deer meat in a respectful and delicious manner.

When I met Mr. Moon I had never dated a man who was anything like him at all. Seriously.

First off, his height. Six feet, ten inches. Honeychile, that's tall. I stand five feet, four and a half inches in a good day. This means that when I hold his jeans up to fold them, they come to my chestular area. Uh-huh. Really. He has a thirty-eight inseam. And I'm not going to even tell you how big his shoes are.

Secondly, he was a jock. He'd played basketball all through high school and college and he'd played some pro ball in Europe and when I met him, he played Ultimate Frisbee. All of the men I'd ever dated considered loading amps to be their main form of physical activity.
This meant that Mr. Moon was formed in a somewhat godlike fashion when it came to his physical being which was a novelty for me. Loading amps doesn't build muscle the way playing basketball or Ultimate Frisbee does. Funny, huh?

Thirdly, while I was, and am to this day, an avid reader, Mr. Moon did not ever even consider once in his life picking up a book to read recreationally. This was beyond understanding to me. I mean...no reading? Oh, he could pick a contract apart like a lawyer but when it came to reading for pleasure, it was not part of his reality.

Fourthly (is that a word?), he hunted. With a gun. Wearing hunting clothes.
Huh?
I was practically a vegetarian. The culture clash of an almost-vegetarian and a hunter was huge. I remember looking at the man pulling the feathers from some sort of small bird he'd bagged IN MY KITCHEN and thinking, "Holy shit, what have I gotten myself into?"

We're about to celebrate our 24th anniversary though so I suppose it's all worked out. He eats tofu on occasion now and I cook a mean venison chili. It makes me feel secure to have a freezer full of white packages labeled "back strap" and "loin" and "roast," not to mention "grouper," "snapper," and "flounder."

We both love to work in the garden and eat what comes out of that, too.

I still read voraciously and he now listens to books on tape that I get him from the library.

And most importantly, I think, our family is the most important thing in the world to both of us.

And he makes me laugh and he makes me feel safe and he's the hardest working man I've ever met. And despite the fact that he sells used cars, he's the most honest man I've ever met as well.

And thank God he's a Democrat. Phew. That would have been a deal-breaker for sure.

We take care of each other, Mr. Moon and I, in the best ways we know how. We've learned to live with our differences and we've come to respect the very things in each other that are the most different.

I don't know how you can get much better than that.

Except, oh yeah, the fact that we love each other tremendously.

On Thursday we're going to head down to Vero Beach to stay for a few days to celebrate our anniversary and I'm looking forward to that. He can take his fishing poles and fish the Sebastian Inlet and I can walk on the beach. And we can spend a lot of time together doing not a lot of much and I think we're going to have a lovely time. We'll eat our anniversary dinner at the Ocean Grill which is where that picture of us was taken about a million years ago.

I still have that dress.

I still have that man.

And a deer on ice.

Ain't I lucky?