I want to be a hunter

I promise, this is not a sad post.  I don't only post sad things.

When I became a parent, I didn't think about how to explain death.  I guess I was in a bubble, naive to the reality that death is really the only thing that we all share in common, even over life.  2017 hit our little family hard with death.  And my four year old was introduced to death, well, well before most children are.  

OK seriously, so easy for me to slip into the darkness of mortality.  Seriously though, bear with me, this post is not about sad things.

But here's the thing.  I personally don't think it's about the exposure - it's about how it's explained to a child - that matters.  I say this with as much respect as I can muster, but to the parents who find it "inappropriate" to discuss death with children - for fucks sake, things DIE.  That's just how life work.  People die.  Plants die. Chickens die so they can fucking be in your chicken pot pie.

Which leads me to today's story.

You see - AJ's been exposed to death in all sorts of ways. We tell him that death is a natural thing that happens when life cannot continue anymore - sometimes it's because something is sick.  Sometimes there is a purpose (like food),  Sometimes, it's for reasons we do not understand.  Things that die don't come back... well, except those things that are destined to be food.  Those things come back onto the dinner table. 

The father of one of AJ's best friends is a hunter.  Like a real sportsman.  He hunts deer, elk, and waterfowl (and probably other stuff that I don't know about).  He hauls his kills home to feed his family.  I've never been comfortable explaining to AJ what exactly H's dad does.  That's probably in part due to my fear (and distrust) of guns.  

Anyway, H's mom delivered 4 freshly acquired ducks to us this weekend.  My dad was absolutely delighted - as any Chinese man would be having just been delivered 4 fresh ducks!  He spent the day feathering the ducks and making duck soup.

At dinner today, he told AJ that he turned the ducks from the fridge into soup.  AJ asked us how the ducks made it to our house. My dad himself was curious about how hunting waterfowl works, so we turned to Youtube to watch a video made by Cabella's about duck hunting basics.  I was a little worried about how AJ would respond to the "duck violence" at first, but I was pleasantly surprised.  He asked us pointedly if the guns killed the ducks and why that happened.  I told him that trained adults use guns to hunt animals for food, so that we may enjoy and eat the meat for dinner.  

He simply accepted the answer, chomped down the rest of his food, and announced by the end of dinner that he wanted to be a hunter like H's daddy when he grows up. 

100 Days

Today is a weird milestone. 

It's gray, cold, and rainy outside.  It's cold enough to feel it in my bones today.  I watch my preschooler go out the door in his brand new Columbia fleece jacket.  Instinctively, as the wind blew gusting in, I pulled his hood up cover his head.  He looked back at me and stuck his tongue out at me, as he waddled menacingly backwards away from me like an oversized baby penguin. 

I have a flashback. I'm not sure that it's even a real one.  But I'm seeing myself at his age. I'm waddling around in a fresh layer of snow in a thick pink coat in front of our new house.  My mom is near by, her brow furrowed in a lukewarm disapproval.  I can't read exactly what she's thinking. She's probably thinking I'm gonna get pneumonia again that winter, prancing around in the snow like that (I did, but it had nothing to do with the snow, I promise). She's probably thinking how beautiful it was outside.  She's probably thinking about what her mom, who grew up in tropical Southern China, would have thought about the wintery blizzard, had she been there and alive at the time.

I'm brought back to present time.  It's 100 days today.  My mom's 100-day death anniversary. It's a weird milestone.  I call it a milestone, because honestly, I don't know what else to call it.  When she was alive, she always used to point out, that people go and honor their deceased family members at the 100 day milestone. 

100 days without her. 

I think hard about what that means. And feel hot tears well up in my eyes as I realize that it's been 100 days that I've been a mother without her.

I get these flashbacks a lot lately.  Like I mentioned, I'm not even sure that they are real memories.  But somehow, I find that this is how I connect with my mom. I have these crazy moments in parenting - like the sacred minutes I hide in my downstairs bathroom to eliminate alone, and I find myself laughing, wondering if my mom ever hid from me like this as a kid.  Or I'll find myself soothing my toddler in the middle of the night, wondering if, 30 years ago, I ever let my mom sit down in her rocking chair to soothe me - or if I was just like my little monsters and desired to be carried and rocked like a human rocking chair. 

Tonight, we ate a dinner in honor of her.  Boiled chicken and Chinese veggie delight.  It was a simple dinner, just the way that she would have liked it. My toddler and I prayed to Jesus about her, asking him to help us be strong and live lives that she would be proud of.  I hope she could hear us up in Heaven.