“Ok? Who wants to go with me?” My husband announces.
“Me!” My daughter exclaims.
Oh great, I think to myself. No chance for a deer now.
Kids are noisy. Kids are messy. Kids are innocent.
She wants to be where her Papa is. Wasn’t I the same?
My younger moments were following in my father’s footsteps. There was no place I would rather be. She is doing the same. She loves her Papa.
I realize what I have forgotten, when I see them come back, hand-in-hand, through the mist, that there are moments beyond the immediate present.
There was no gunshot in the distance. There was no blood on his hands. There was no deer.
But there was a moment captured forever. A father. A daughter. A lesson. A memory.
I would give up a thousand deer to see them walk again through the mist.
But I would kill a thousand deer to see what transpires between these two souls.
Their journey. Their memories. Their love.
I will wait every season.
© Jennifer Cote
MOOSE, MUSHROOMS, and MUD 