Yesterday, I spent a rather silly amount of time setting the Thanksgiving table, even pulling out my mother and grandmother’s sterling butter knives. Sherod mostly puts up with the silliness though it means little to him. Then we sat, each of us at each end of the table, and had a marvelous meal with our children, grandchildren and three friends who knew Sherod and Charlie when Charlie was a little boy–in fact, Sherod and his first wife and children spent summer vacations with Pat, Larry and Brett. Sherod and I now share a meal with these new-old friends most Sunday evenings.

This morning, I was up at a bit before four and sat with my stepson while we both drank coffee. We are both early risers. He was up especially early to spend the day deer hunting. By mid morning, Sherod had decided he was going to join Charlie for the afternoon part of the hunt. It’s been close to twenty years since Sherod’s done that. We often talked in Ft Lauderdale about how he’d lost interest in hunting, no longer willing to kill a creature so easily. It was clear to me yesterday, and even more today, how deep the bonds are between father and son, and how formative these kinds of days have been for both of them. Sherod has come home in so many and such profound ways.

I can’t say that days like today and pictures like this are all that easy for me. I know I will enjoy bowls of venison chili this winter. I had no doubt that it was important for Charlie and Sherod to go do this thing. I am just keenly aware that it is a part of the circle of his life I stand on the outside of–just as he looks in on much of what still defines me, like the butter knives I stood and polished for over an hour on Tuesday. The mystery of the Venn Diagram that constitutes a marriage…