Dear Richard

#1

Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024

Dear Richard,

Your Mother is likely going to give birth to you any day now, any hour perhaps. You’re giving her a run for her money and it’s a race she’s sure happy to be in. The pain means the things you love in life were worth something. She sure does love you something fierce.

Your Mother is nesting and preparing the house in all the ways that matter. I’m mostly pacing and praying. I got your carseat planted in my old Ford pickup only to find a check engine light blazing. I popped the hood and found out how wild our little town is for a critter had chewed up several systems in the engine compartment. The present the critter left indicated the critter to be the masked jester of the animal kingdom: good ‘ol Procyon Lotor has an appetite for wires and engine oil it seems.

The Common Raccoon is a survivor as I pray you will be. He washes his hands and lives in peaceful obscurity when he’s not chewing up Coyote engines. I have no ill will toward the good Lord’s critters and creatures but I want to be able to get your Mama to the hospital when you decide to make your entrance to The Show.

I went to the Tractor Supply and got a live trap.

This genteel cage, bated with two of Raccoon’s favorite things: cat food and marshmallows, has a door, which softly closes once occupied by a curious Raccoon, or Ron the cat.

I could go on about how a son of mine need know about the dangers of golden cages furnished with temptation, and that we’ll do in due time, but I want you to know Raccoons were made to be living free in the woods, wild like all God’s creatures are meant to be. And how the Raccoon is increasingly an urban critter, having sold his birthright like Esau did long ago.

Richard, you can be free, or you can be cat food dependent.

I’ve caught 3 Raccoons over 4 nights, and each one looks chagrined, as though they’ve been caught red handed having traded liberty for a fistful of baby marshmallows.

Each time I talk gently to the embarrassed Raccoon, telling him that he need not live in this fashion, that there’s no need to be ashamed, cat food and marshmallows can get their hooks into anybody, but you were made to be free, and that I’m taking him to be free with his Raccoon brethren.

I then drive them far into the everlasting prairie to a hollow down by a crick, next to the biggest South Dakotan tree I’ve yet seen and set them free.

Boy, God made you born free. Don’t let the world slowly take that from you.

But if you do, should you slowly sloth yourself into the sickly comfort of marshmallows and cat food, becoming plump and complacent and chagrined for you know you were made for more, Christ is always there. He likes to rattle all the cages, and swing the doors wide open for the captives to go free. He’ll do that for you too.

He’s real good like that.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners;”

~ The Prophet Isaiah 61.1 NASB

Love, Dad.

Leaning Tree Painting by Charles Heteny