The Hunt For Great Friends Stops Here

My family lives in Alaska. When my mom was pregnant with me, my dad had a scheduled hunting trip with his buddies. It was supposed to take place after my mom’s due date. Her own mom was supposed to come and help while he was away.

Well, I decided to be fashionably late, and circumstances conspired against my grandma’s arrival on time. Mom went to forty weeks, then forty-one weeks, and was soon closing in on forty-two weeks. Dad wasn’t pleased because where we live, that hunting trip wasn’t just hanging out with “the guys”. It was important because the game they were going to catch was meant to supply us with meat for the winters we got around there.

Obviously, he didn’t blame Mom. It just worried and upset him that I was late. It worried and upset him because hunting was also a necessity. And it worried and upset him that my grandma wasn’t going to be able to help his wife if he was gone. It was just one big ball of overall stress.

The guys told Dad to stay home, and Dad stayed because knew where he was supposed to be.

Ten days or so later, his buddies came home.

Dad’s best friend showed the moose he had bagged, saying, “Look at what I got!”

Dad then brought me out with a huge papa grin, saying, “And look at what I got!”

The guys made the appropriate fuss, and then they dropped the surprise: they had hunted for us. Not only had they bagged game for their own families, but they also hooked up our own little family with meat from their trip.

The guys and Dad spent guy-time together, preparing the meat for storage, packing it up, and occasionally popping a head indoors to check on Mom. A few were fathers themselves and helped out to do little things for her around the house while the others worked. This let Dad let off steam preparing food for his family while also giving Mom the break she needed.

To this day, those guys are like my uncles, and they and my dad are tighter than thieves.

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