FIRST CHRISTMAS GOOSE

Eight years ago, I started writing Christmas stories in lieu of a letter highlighting the previous year of our lives. I am sharing this year's story below. It is the first Christmas story I have written that has much to do with hunting and the first that is completely true:

The boy spent the previous evening wiping down his Crossman pump-action BB gun until it was perfect. He checked and rechecked his tin can of copper BBs to make sure he would have enough for the morning goose hunt. Then he went to bed, but he could not sleep. He had begged his father for months to take him goose hunting. Christmas Eve morning of his ninth year would be his first goose hunt. What a perfect Christmas gift. How could anyone sleep the night before such an adventure? He had heard all the stories, but it was the way in which the adults relived them that intrigued the boy. It was the way his father spent hours preparing for the hunt and then disappeared for even more hours, always returning with the kind of look on his face that the boy understood as satisfaction and joy.

Now it was his turn. On the Christmas Eve morning of his ninth year he would finally get to join his father. He would finally become a hunter.

He watched his breath rise in the frigid, starlit morning as they hiked the mile or so from the Suburban to the goose pit beside the river. His father’s and uncle’s feet crunched through the hard top layer of snow ahead of him. At first, he followed those footsteps but the stride proved too difficult so he ventured to the side where he could actually walk on top of the snow without busting through. Before long, his fingers began to burn with cold and the Crossman felt as if it had grown heavier since they began. But he could not complain. This day he was one of the hunters and to be a hunter meant you endured the long, dark, and cold walk to the goose pit.

As he descended into the goose pit, his father told him to take the middle seat. His father and uncle sat on opposite sides of him. They uncased their shotguns and leaned them into the notched shelf ahead of them. The boy did the same with his BB gun. His father lit one of the propane heaters and placed it in front of the boy who was doing his best to hide the shivering he could not control. Then they sat quietly and waited. The boy had to kneel on the swiveling seat in order to see out from under the decoys which hid the holes they had cut into the sliding lid.

It was too early to see anything yet, but he could hear a few geese chattering from the reserve across the river. He pulled his fingers into the palms of his gloves and his legs occasionally shook, but he could hear the geese and the promise of action warmed him from the inside out. When the morning light that preceded the sunrise cast its soft glow over the river, the boy stretched his neck and took a peek. A light mist hung over the small patch of water that had not yet frozen over. Grayness seemed to suspend the distant and leafless cottonwoods in a moment that defied the limitation of time. It held the memories of the past, the hopes of the future and the truth of the present all within the simplicity of the prairie morning.

Soon the chattering rose to a fervor. His father pointed to his ear signaling him to listen then began staring through the small openings with the kind of focus the boy had never known. There was no mistaking when the geese rose from the reserve. The honks and cackles rose up in unison with thousands of birds as they broke into the sky under a massive burst of wings that left the boy in awe. As the geese gained altitude and began to fly toward them, he prayed some of them would turn in to the decoys his father and uncle had set.

His ears began to ring with the fervent honking his father and uncle were imitating with their calls. He stared through small opening as small flocks of Canada geese flew over and circled so low he could actually hear their wings beating against the wind.

After the third time around, the geese set their wings and his dad pulled the call away from his lips. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.” Then, “Take em!”

The lid slid back along its rollers and the hunters rose up. The boy jumped to his feet and raised his BB gun. The geese dug their wings against the air, now aware they had been duped and for a moment, time paused.

Then the air filled with shotgun blasts and reeling birds and feathers and the scent of burning powder. Despite it all, instinct took over. The boy was part of the hunt—a part of something natural and pure. He felt alive. He focused on a bird at the edge of the flock and let a single copper BB fly.

Somehow, the goose he was aiming at dropped and landed with a thud on the frozen ground. And then his father and uncle did something that ignited a fire in him that would last the rest of his life. They let him believe. That goose was his. He had shot it. He had become one of them.

Then, to prove they were sure he had shot it, they let him retrieve it and told him he would have to clean it himself. Of course, his mother wanted the Christmas goose to be plucked—and they honored him by letting his be the Christmas goose.

The boy spent an hour digging feathers from the warm breast of that goose and it was then when he started to understand that though hunting was exciting and fun and decent, it was also hard and it was serious. He began to understand that life and death were inseparable and that to deny his part in it would be like denying who he was and where he came from. Most importantly, he began to understand his father. That day he learned something intimate about the man who raised him. He learned there was a fire in his dad’s heart and by simply sharing his passion with his son, by taking him goose hunting, he had passed that fire on.

Thirty-three years later on the Christmas Eve of his forty-second year, the boy now struggling to become just a fraction of the man his father was, stared into an empty chair. It was the first Christmas without him. And like had happened after that first Christmas goose, his life would never be quite the same.

He stared at the empty chair and then at a nearby nativity. He thought about the very first Christmas and about the great sacrifices a Father is willing to endure for His children. He thought about the mystery of suffering. He thought about the strength of faith. He thought about the true meaning of love. He thought about how much he misunderstood the gifts he had been given and he thought about the final lasting gift his father had given him. Hope. And he prayed for the wisdom and the strength to pass the fire of Faith, Hope, and Love on to his own children.

SIMPLY BEING THERE

It was my daughter's first deer hunt and the November Arctic blast had me wondering if I was crazy to bring an eleven-year-old girl into the woods when wind chills were below zero. I told myself the pop-up blind would help keep the elements at bay. I told myself that it would be a good lesson to her that hunting was not always comfortable. Mostly, I told myself that she had been begging for months and this was one of the few days we had to spend in the field together.

As we sat in the blind, I saw the hope in her eyes as she watched the trees for movement. I saw the excitement she felt for being able to share a moment with her father doing something she knew he had always enjoyed. I saw that despite her cold fingers and toes, she had no desire to be anywhere else.

I thought about how my father had introduced me to hunting in a goose blind. I thought about the lessons my kids would learn just by spending time outdoors. I thought about how hunting allowed them to become a true part of the natural world God created beyond the deafening clatter of civilization.

I thought about the way a sunset could teach her about humility. I thought about how the cold and lack of action could teach her about will power. I thought about how studying the deepening shadows of the woods searching for a deer could teach her about focus. There were so many lessons my daughter could learn in the woods. Lessons that would stay with her for the rest of her life.

By sharing this experience with her, I could share myself with her without every uttering a word. My hope is that when she steps into the freshness of a new morning, she will want to face the day the same way I did. When she sees a buck walk by almost close enough for her to touch it she will know the fear and excitement and awe that I knew when I saw my first buck up close. When she gives everything to the day behind her, she will know the satisfaction of a day well-lived regardless if any preconceived goal was attained. And one day, when she sees the eyes of her own children light up when they hunt their first deer, she will understand how deeply I love her.

She will not know these things because I told her, but because she was able to experience them, to feel them in her soul and know that a part of me will always be with her. If she remembers that part of me maybe I can believe I did something right.

We did not say much to each other and we only saw a single doe run across a distant field that evening, but I will remember that hunt for the rest of my life. And when she begged to go out again the next day, I knew she would remember it as well.