A hunter is born.......

Here I sit, Esme is asleep across my feet - her way of not letting me out of her sight unnanounced - and needing to do 2 things.  1. Hit the "open" button on the 2010 Tax Return software and 2. Catch my flight on the next space shuttle.  Since I'm not at all packed for my trip to the moon that would leave option #1.....for a few more minutes anyway!

I need to back up in my story a bit to give you more of an idea of how my uncle worked his way into our world. I had forgotten to mention that 2 years prior to my mother leaving Swift Current her mother had died quite suddenly.  Her trip to Vernon to bury her mother was the first time that she had reconnected with some of her siblings - one of them being her brother, my eventual torturer.  She was quite taken with him I think.  He was very urban and quite successful at his career.  Perhaps the most defining moment for her during that occasion was the night right after my Grandmother's burial.  Each of her 9 children had taken a red rose from the casket spray and somehow during the night my uncle realized that he had lost his rose.  In the middle of a February night he walked quite a distance to the cemetary, found her grave and took another rose from the spray of flowers laying on top of her grave.  My mother, being ever maternal, thought that this was the most heroic and stoic event and she spoke almost reverantly about him after she returned home.  He called our home a few times - family squabbles regarding the will, etc. had begun in earnest and he was the one sibling that my mother seemed to believe in and even told him on the phone that he was her favourite brother. There was a large age difference between the 2 of them and I really think that my mother conveyed a message of "motherly" love to my uncle.  I think that he knew that but I also think that he knew that he had his "foor in the door" to my world. At that point all he would have had known about me was the what the family photos that my mother took with her to Vernon would have shown. A hunter stalks his prey, slowly, quietly, never wanting to step on a branch or a twig that could shatter the silence and catch the calm, gentle doe feeding on the grass.  No, the hunter has patience, the hunter waits to have that doe in the crosshairs of his scope, waits for that moment when she is singled out from her herd and unsuspecting of any tragedy about to befall her - he waits until he has the perfect clean shot - and then...........