He called me Pilgrim. We shared a love of peach milkshakes, pickles, peanut M&M’s, home grown tomatoes, blueberry anything, and we’d fight over Shirley Pitner’s stack cake. He taught me how to throw a frisbee, cast a line, shoot a variety of weapons, train a dog, clean my glasses, and identify trees in any season. Oh, and the best advice he ever gave me that I evoke multiple times a day (and it shows): “Eat all you can, every time you can, ’cause there ain’t no tellin’ what might happen before you can eat again.” We listened to Rush Limbaugh and Patsy Cline when I rode in his truck. We watched Star Trek and The Twilight Zone when I stayed with them when I was young. He bought me a microscope, and my first sleeping bag, but not the My Little Pony kite from McDonalds. And we have never let him forget it. My first (and last!) deer hunting trip was under his watchful eyes and sharp tongue. I couldn’t do anything right, but he’d sometimes concede that I was doing alright for a wimpy little girl. This was said in jest, and primarily to get me riled so I could do whatever it was I thought I couldn’t.He thought I should wear heels to work every day and that I should stay redheaded.He mowed my yard and…