Yeah, well I’m taller.

Currently I am still taller than my son. But my days are numbered I’m fairly certain.

I took this picture yesterday:

Frowny dude.

I took these ones two years ago in July:

Gosh, he’s getting tall.

In drawing class last fall we had an assignment to create a drawing using at least three figures in a narrative. We were encouraged, but not required, to use a comic strip sort of layout or at least idea for moving the story along.

So I took a few of my pictures from swim lessons last summer…

and used them to put together something of a montage of Child C at swimming.

I’m not really all that comfortable with realism, so I traced and transferred the figures onto my paper. My instructor liked the nostalgic, old picture feeling I ended up with. He preferred it without the yellowy background. Then he delved deeper into the picture to find that it seemed like a study in the ephemeral nature of youth. Described here by the interminal waiting, the preparing, poised just on on the precipice, and then, whoosh, they’re gone.

This was not what I was thinking of when I was making this piece and nearly made me cry in class. Jerk.

Anyway, I felt like these pictures of the progress of  Child C as he grows taller (he can now just grab stuff out of that top cabinet!) and moves through time toward his  own big splash had the same feeling of trying to capture a moment in time before it gets away from you.

Or grows taller than you. 😀

The Rabbit Died

I am not actually opposed to hunting. (Unless it is purely for sport)

I’m not a vegetarian.

I feel that there is a certain price we pay for taking a life. Of any kind. So, to me, if you are going to be a meat eater, it is more authentic to kill it yourself and pay the price yourself, then it is to transfer the cost to someone else and get your non-animal shaped meat packages delivered to you.

I think it’s very easy in this society to be completely removed from our food sources. I think many people are able to disconnect the hamburger in the store or in the restaurant from the cow in the field.

Having said that, I don’t follow my own code. I am not going to kill my own meat to eat. I get upset when birds, mice, squirrels, dart out to hit my car when I’m driving. By my own code I should, therefore, not eat meat. I do, at least, try to be mindful of it.

I married a mountain man, a warrior, a hunter. A man who can and has lived off the land completely. These days he may physically not be the mountain man he once was, but mentally he hasn’t changed much from the young man roaming the mountains of Wyoming.

So I struggle with how much hunting stuff my son gets to do. I’m sure that my husband thinks I’m just a big buzzkill on this issue. But if were only up to me, my innocent little boy could go his entire life without ever having hunted. Obviously, it is not only up to me. So things go too fast for me and too slow for them and we muddle in the middle where most of life happens.

This week we passed a milestone on our hunting journey. The Dudeling shot his first rabbit. He is so proud and I am proud for him. I am also sad. Because the rabbit died. And he’s the one who killed it.

On his path to becoming a man. He has provided food for the family table now. Because we eat what we kill. If it’s big enough to eat. So Daddy helped him dress it so we can cook him up. Speaking of which….any good rabbit recipes out there?