Well, He Is On HIs Way

I dropped Mr. Moon off at the airport and I only cried a little and as I was getting in the car I said, "Just remember how much I love you," but he was already texting and trying to deal with his bags and then he looked up and smiled and said, "I love you too."
On the way to the airport he said, "I really want to tell you how much I appreciate you letting me go do this. It's something I love so much and who knows how much longer I'll be able to do it?"
I didn't even want to go there. I want him to be able to hunt forever and ever and ever and all which that might imply but of course, if wishes were fishes...

Hank and I went to lunch at a Mediterranean restaurant and the food was delicious. A beautiful plate and the server was beautiful and described a dish as "smooshed fava beans" and we had a very good time talking and laughing. Each of my children are so very precious to me and are such amazing people. Of course I'm their mama but people tell me that all the time. And they are each and every one completely different. Like night and day and different planets but they are all filled with starshine and sunlight and they are my glory.

I went to the library and to Publix and look what I bought.

Other stuff, too, but that's most of the fruit that will go into fruitcakes. Why, why, why? 

Because I can and I want to. I will bake them and wrap them up with rum-soaked cheesecloth and put them in tins and let them sit for awhile. I think I might make small ones and give them away. Who knows? 

I came home and felt as if I was under a deadline and for what, I have no idea. I unloaded everything and put everything away and the house felt lonely, although not really so much. It is hard for this house to feel very lonely with so many spirits of the floor boards and walls and so many lights I can turn on and music, too, if I want. It is going to freeze here tomorrow night, maybe, and so I brought in all the smaller plants and now I am living in a jungle. 

And that's just a few of them and not one of them is going to get the light it needs but I know they will survive and most of them would not if they were outside. My mudroom has an eight-foot long table on it which is also filled with plants. I wonder how many lizards I brought in. Luckily, I do not mind lizards at all and Maurice simply loves them.

I have a pot of daisy mums that survived from last year and it is in full bloom. I left it on the porch.

Tomorrow I will drag the huge ferns and the giant split leaf philodendron mother to the wall on the porch and cover them all up with sheets and blankets. It has been a good year for the hanging ferns. They are so happy and luxurious and I hate to think of the toll winter will have on them but there is really no room for them in the house. Some of them hang four feet from their pots and I'm not not even kidding you. 

Another thing I did this afternoon was to dig out the old journal that Lon gave me for my birthday in 2001 which I never used until January 11 of 2013 when I pulled it out and started writing in it and drawing pictures in it, even coloring them

and I cannot draw for shit but on January 11 (yes, I am repeating myself) I started writing in it and on January the 14th, this is what I wrote and drew

and two days later, my mother died. 

And I wrote and wrote and wrote in this journal about that. The story of her death and how horrible it was and I kept up with the writing for a little while longer and then put the journal away but today I got it out and wrote in it again. Hank and I talked today about writing, real writing, with pen and paper, the way we used to do all the time. So I went and found the journal and got out my beautiful red ink pen that I bought in Asheville, North Carolina, a true fountain pen, and the paper of this journal sucks and holds the ink which flows so beautifully from the nib. 

Maybe I'll get out my colors, too. Who cares if I can't draw? It doesn't matter. 

It is all a real thing which I can hold in my hand and go back and look at and read. 

I don't think I've ever gone back and looked at what I wrote when my mother died. Maybe I should. Maybe I shouldn't. But it's there if I need it and I do remember how sad it all was, the exact opposite sort of death she had ever wanted and how the song "Sister Morphine" kept playing in my head.

Well! This is morbid as fuck!

La-di-dah and la-di-dah and all is well here in Lloyd. Chickens tucked up and I'll turn the heat on soon because I am a wimp, until it's time to go to bed and then I will turn the heat way down and open the window above my bed and crawl into the cave of goose-down with my cat who does not care about me at all, just ask her, but who suffers my scratching and stroking gladly on cold nights and who, according to Mr. Moon, kisses me on the lips to make me stop snoring. 

"It works!" he says. 

"Harumph," I say. 

For ten nights I will snore all I want and not worry about it a bit and I guess that is some solace in this great pond of aloneness with all of the green plants silently breathing out oxygen for me to take in as the cat and I breathe out carbon dioxide for the plants to breathe in and thank you for being here. 

Love...Ms. Moon

The Hunt

I posted this picture before, I believe, but I'm posting it again. It was taken last Thanksgiving. Mr. Moon had recently gotten that bow and had set up a deer stand and a target in the yard and was practicing. Isn't he beautiful, that man of mine?

Every year when it begins to get cool, Mr. Moon's thoughts turn to the woods and he longs to be there. He yearns to be there, sitting silently in the predawn morning, waiting to hear the chuff of the deer, watching wild turkeys come in, watching the light fill the day beneath the trees, listening, looking, feeling the cold air on his skin.

I, of course, a sometimes vegetarian and a woman who does not want to leave her warm bed for anything before dawn, except perhaps a flight to Cozumel, have a hard time understanding this yearning of his. This need to get up and go into the woods and wait for the right shot. I have no idea what he feels when he hunts but I know it is powerful. I know how I feel at certain times of the year when the air feels just so, the light shines just so, the length of the days is just so. Perhaps what I feel is that I have to get in the dirt and plant or that I want to be in Mexico or that I wish to be by the water. But I'm not certain that I feel anything as strongly as his need to be in the woods, quiet and waiting.

Well. Perhaps the writing. Maybe that is as strong- my need to capture the words.

When the children were young and his need to be in the woods overcame him and he planned a trip to hunt, I was, quite frankly, resentful. He was working ten, twelve hours a day, six days a week and god knows he deserved to allow himself that time. But I was raising four children and had no time at all to get away, and I look back at that now and I realize how hard I was working and I am compassionate to that young woman I was with her resentment. It was not just the time away from us, it was also the fact that he did not choose to spend that time with ME. I couldn't understand it because if I got time to go off without the children, I would want to spend it with HIM.

I didn't understand.

I still don't, really. But as I have gotten older and am more sure of his love in every way, I understand that his need has nothing to do with me at all. It is something very primal in him and so strong that I cannot resent it. I can't begrudge him the time away and I have learned how delicious deer meat is and I have seen over and over again his delight when I cook it well. It makes him love me more.

Last night I had cooked two backstraps, which are the tenderest part of the deer. They are so lean that I have to put a few strips of bacon in there to give them some fat. I could use olive oil and sometimes I do, but I had the bacon, I used it. I put them in the crock pot and I covered them in garlic and onions and potatoes and carrots and I made up a broth of this and that and I covered them up and let them simmer until they were all done and I made a loaf of bread and realized I had forgotten to pick salad until it was already dark and so I just opened a can of green beans- so what? - and it was good. And he was happy and he washed the dishes.

He's already gone this morning to spread the dirt around in Lily's yard where he dug it up to lay the sewer line and this afternoon he's going to come home and get ready to up to Georgia where he hunts sometimes and he's going to spend the night so he can hunt this evening and then again tomorrow morning. It used to be I would have begrudged him that time but now I don't. He's the hardest working man I know or have ever known except perhaps for his own daddy who is the one who took him to the woods when he was a boy and there you have it. When his daddy was growing up, poor as poor can be in Tennessee, they had to have that meat. Hunting was not a sport, it was a way to keep the family alive. And I think that in Mr. Moon's soul, that belief is still there, even if it is not logical (and what is logical about me sitting here on a fall morning, typing this story, these words?) and that every time he takes careful aim and shoots and a deer falls, he feels he's done something as real as real- he has provided meat for his family.

He is respectful of the animal. He doesn't shoot unless he has a clean shot, he humps that beast out of the woods, he and Jason cut it up and package it. And then I cook it and he is satisfied in some very deep way.

Chili Colorado with venison, venison tamales, white bean chili with ground venison, venison meatloaf, simmered venison with vegetables, barbequed venison, venison cube steak with gravy and mashed potatoes, venison sausage for breakfast or in a pot of beans, venison stew, vegetable and venison soup....I take the meat he brings home and I turn it into meals that sustain us, that nurture us. I respect the meat, too.

I am no longer a vegetarian. If I had to kill my own meat, I would be. I know that. And if given the choice of giving up meat for the rest of my life or beans, I would give up the meat. Luckily, I don't have to do those things, make those choices. But it feels so much more correct, so much more honest, to cook and eat the meat that Mr. Moon brings home from the woods. He has taught me so much about life, this man. I have said before and I will say it again- I don't even know if I would still be here if I hadn't met him, he hadn't fallen in love with me, taken my hand and said, "Let's be a family."

And so when he goes this afternoon to Georgia, I will send him off with a kiss and a tupperware container of leftovers from last night's supper that he will eat in the woods and I will stay here and do whatever it is that I do. Write, knit, make my own supper. Perhaps a bean and vegetable soup (it's going to be cold) with deer sausage. I don't mind being alone. I love and need that time.

And I love and need him. It's as simple as that. Some things are not logical in today's world but that doesn't mean they aren't true. We can try to analyze them, we can analyze them to death and not find the truth of the simplicity of our needs and I choose not to do that. I choose to just realize the truth of the matter and love the man who taught me this.

We fall in love. We do not talk ourselves into it. Next Sunday Mr. Moon and I will have been married twenty-five years. I find it fitting that he married me in hunting season. That year, 1984, he hunted me and he slayed me with his love and goodness.
His aim was true.

It still is.

An Embarrassment of Riches

Mr. Moon went out hunting this morning and I went out gathering.

Although it's seventy-something degrees here, it's overcast and the wind is blowing. The windchimes are playing music all over the place and the magnolia tree's stiff, glossy leaves are making a rattling music of their own.

And it's supposed to get back down into the twenties by tomorrow night.

Ah well.

Last night, when we went out on the front porch to have our Friday happy hour drink, I noticed that the Sea Foam Camellia, which I transplanted here from the last place I lived, was FULL of flowers. Unbelievable.

So this morning I went out and cut them all because they're going to be brown and dead and hanging from their bush-mother in forty-eight hours if I don't. Now they're gracing my hallway, along with a few pink ones from the back yard. I do not know their name and I feel shame at that. What kind of an old Southern Lady Gardener am I if I don't even know the names of my camellias?

Not a very good one. Not a BONA FIDE one, I'll tell you that. Did you know that bona fide is two words? I didn't either. But I see by the dictionary that it is, and it comes from the Latin meaning, "in good faith."

For my favorite useage ever of the word(s) bona fide please check out the following:



And, to get us back to camellias, I give you this:



It's Saturday, the wind is blowing a coldness our way, the camellias are posing in their petticoats in my house. A train is going by, scattering the birds with its sound, and I am happy.

Oh. Mr. Moon was as successful in his hunting as I was in my gathering and brought home meat.

Children, that man is bona fide.

Corniest Hunting Poem Ever Written

Mr. Moon has gone away
He left the house before the break of day
He took his guns, his boots, his camo,
He took his bow, he took his ammo
He's gone to hunt in Tennessee
And the only thing he didn't take was me.

I got up this morning before the sun was up
To make his breakfast and fill his coffee cup
I held the door while he loaded his gear
I cooked his eggs while he dreamed of deer
The deer he'll hunt in Tennessee
The deer he'll hunt while away from me.

It's strange to be in an empty house
Just me and the dogs and occasional mouse
It's quiet and it's warm and it's cold outside
And for six days now it'll be a solo ride
Because Mr. Moon's headed to Tennessee
In a car that's traveling north without me.

When the babies were young and so was I
I resented these trips and would often cry
Because I hated the thought that he'd left our home
To go off to hunt, all alone
But now when he heads up to Tennessee
I'm fine with the fact that he doesn't take me.

Because he's that sort of man who has to go
To the woods to hunt; he loves it so
And I like the quiet of the peaceful home
While he's gone to the Tennessee woods to roam
And I've sent him with love off to Tennessee
Because I know he'll return when he's done, to me.

And while he's gone I'll write and read
I'll walk, I'll yoga, I have everything I need
In our sweet little house under the oaks right here
While he's off to the woods to hunt white-tailed deer
At night maybe I'll dream of him in Tennessee
And I hope while he's there he will dream of me.