You may or may not have heard about Target’s latest kerfuffle; basically they’ve donated $150k to a local PAC group that is promoting the election of an individual who doesn’t support equal rights/gay marriage.

I don’t like this. Not one bit.

I heard the report on NPR yesterday and was pissed at the lack of logic in their CEO’s statement (we support teh Gayz! we also support teh Crazy who doesn’t!). And, as much as it pains me, I’m not shopping there until they fix this. The beauty of the internet is that the more people who voice their anger and concerns, along with their boycott, the faster it can be resolved. There’s a Facebook group, and you can sign a pre-written petition at Change.org. I chose to write my own letter, because I love Target and I don’t want to have to shop somewhere else.  I hope that if enough people do this, Target can undo the damage they’ve done to their brand.

Email to Mark Schindele (Senior Vice President), Denise May (CEO Assistant) and Gregg Steinhafel (Chairman, President and CEO):

I have shopped at Target my entire adult life. It has always been my store of preference. I have a Target Visa. I purchase household items, makeup, food, entertainment and Target has always been my number-one destination to purchase those items. I lived in Minneapolis after college for over 5 years, and still carry with me the desire to read the sale flyer before all other things on Sunday. My loyalty to your brand, your store and your products has always been unwavering.
So it is with great regret that I must suspend shopping at Target until your position on the current support for Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Emmer is reversed. Your logic is flawed, and I quote from your statement on Monday: “Let me be very clear, Target’s support of the GLBT community is unwavering, and inclusiveness remains a core value of our company.” Mr. Steinhafel, when you support a candidate who does not support equal rights for the gay community, you do not support the GLBT community. Your money is working in direct opposition of that community.  You may be comfortable with that inconsistency, but I am not. Therefore, my money is not going to your company until you issue a retraction of your support for this candidate, and donate an equal sum ($150,000) to a local or national organization that seeks to further the fight for equality and civil rights for my gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered peers.

Regretfully,

Jennifer

Sorrow drips into your heart through a pinhole
Just like a faucet that leaks and there is comfort in the sound
But while you debate half empty or half full
It slowly rises, your love is gonna drown

- from the song “Marching Bands of Manhattan” by Death Cab for Cutie

Last Thursday, June 10th, I hit the four-year mark. I anticipated it, I eyeballed the date for days leading up to it. I felt the fluttering fingers of dread rise up in my stomach. Four years since I watched my father take his last breaths, four years that have seen changes and sorrow and laughter and joy and struggles and anger. Oh the mighty anger. In the beginning of those four years, it felt like being in a blender. Nothing would ever return to how it was, the very essence of who I was had been forever changed, and even intellectually you grasp that, of course not, there is a dividing line between Before and After. But you want Before like never before. And you fear After and that it will erase Before and you also find out who your true friends are. People will tell you you’ve changed (and not for the better) and they won’t understand that the faucet of grief doesn’t shut off in three months. That priorities shift and change. In fact, it seems to just be getting started, the grief, because everyone else has moved on and you are rooted in the new reality, confused. And you feel your love and your life will all drown. Your head goes under. Sometimes you think about staying under, too. Nights in the bathroom, on the back steps, crying. Sobbing in the shower, weeping in the car, how can so much sorrow live and thrive in one human’s space?
I miss my dad. Now, though, when I dream about him, it is a comfort. A friendly visit, even if the dream is crazy. His face, his voice, his laugh and the memory of his hugs are etched into my soul. That, I must say, is the thing for which I am most grateful. As I’ve aged, details and names and memories get muddied, blurred, fall away. I feared so badly my father’s memory would follow suit. My grief was my hair shirt, one coping mechanism of keeping him alive, assuaging any guilt I felt about having a laugh or a moment that resembled normal. Eventually I realized my grief became less paralyzing. And in the middle of the afternoon on June 10, last week, I was busy working, as I had been all day. I looked at my calendar on my desktop and frowned. I said the date out loud and then it hit me. It was June 10th. Here and Now. That Day. I felt an instant stab of guilt that I had spent half my day without realizing That Day Was Here Again. Then I thought, wow. All of you people who have walked this road before me were right.
It really does get better.

Well, this is not an easy story to tell. But I’ve managed to tell it a few times now, and I even see the humor in it – hell, part of my brain even saw it in the moment, so I’m going to give it a go. If you’re exceptionally tender-hearted, then I suggest you go look at chinchillas and come back another day.

For those following on all fronts, you might have seen some exasperated plurks/tweets earlier this week (Tuesday), in which I screeched about a particular bird that was making a ruckus outside, so loudly I wanted to go and shoot it. Said bird kept up the racket all afternoon. When James came home from work, he noticed it, and decided to investigate. Turns out? We had two baby ducklings hanging out by my herb bed, and he got a small net and a box, and scooped them up.

I immediately changed from “goddamned bird” to “omg! SQUEE THEY ARE SO CUTE!” and while he went off to look for the momma duck, I tried to pick them up in the box. Fleet little creatures, ducklings are, but eventually, I scooped one up and delighted in its softness, beauty and fluff.

Tripper, meanwhile, walked by and saw the other duckling and went, CHOMP, and scooped one up in his mouth. Horrified, James and I both screamed at him, he dropped the duckling, I put him back in the box – where he died, 15 seconds later.

Fuck. My. Life. James took the dogs inside, and I removed the duckling from the box, and burst into tears. Now, see, most people, at the very beginning of this story, where I say, “Two baby ducklings…” have an instant transformation in their expression. They know. They understand, the doomed nature of ….. Nature. But not me. I think everything can be rescued, everything can be saved, just work hard enough and everything turns out alright. And so, suddenly, this dead duckling exploded into a personification of all the stress and angst with job-related things, that no matter how well-intentioned or hard you might be working, a giant black lab can come along and just pluck you out of your existence.

I pulled myself together, put the (now lonely) duckling in the box, and went inside.

Somewhere in the next fifteen minutes, a small case was made (again) for chickens. If we had a chicken tractor, we could just throw the duckling in there, and he’d be fine. We discussed options. Keeping said duckling, raising him. But I searched online, and there wasn’t a lot of hope or options there. Plus someone made the point that one duck is a very lonely duck. We still have a goodly number of feral cats around, and those probably created this very predicament in the first place. James boiled it down to two choices – he could take care of things, or I could take the duckling, try to find a pond with a duck family on it, release the duckling, and hope for the best.

I put some paper towels in the bottom of a Costco-sized Contadina Tomato Paste box, put the duckling inside, and into the Murano we went. James advised me to drive along Blue River Road, which truly is a beautiful stretch of asphalt tucked away in the city. I’d never been on it, so after veering off Bannister by the Federal Complex, I found the road and headed south. There were parks, and even some ponds, but I couldn’t spot any ducks, and even though there were cars parked in places, I also couldn’t see any people. Because it felt pretty isolated, I didn’t feel completely secure just getting out and tromping around. So I kept going. And going. And going. Until I got to Blue Ridge, and then I knew I had to start heading back towards home. I drove up Holmes, and spotted a great pond – but no ducks. And there was a strange woman parked there and the signs said “No Trespassing”, so I continued to look. I figured I wouldn’t be able to just roll on in to a golf course, but then I thought – Mt. Moriah! Yes! Cemeteries often have ponds, reflecting pools, etc. And as the sun inched towards the horizon, I found myself rolling through the placid hills and then – yes – there it was. Two large pools of water. I made my way towards them.

The good thing about hanging out in a cemetery is that nobody really pays attention to you. Most of the people there are dead, and the ones who are alive are focused on one or two spots. It’s a serene place, and I actually used to study in cemeteries in college, just to find complete isolation (and I was in my Harold & Maude stage).  So I drove around, waited for some people to leave that were nearby, and approached the pond furthest from the grave sites. No ducks, but there were a large number of geese. Birds of a feather! The ugly duckling. Surely, these feathered relatives would take on a lonely duckling.

Now, again, a good percentage of you have changed your facial expressions. I’ve watched it happen this week, again, at this point in the story. But I didn’t know. I know geese can be territorial, but I had no idea they’d be so discerning that they’d immediately know this ball of fluff was NOT of their species, and would proceed to peck him to death.

But that didn’t happen. Because that would have been pretty horrifying for me, yes, and I would have probably gotten into a goose fight and I really cannot imagine how that might have unfolded, except I probably would have been brought home to my husband by the South Patrol and asked to never enter Mt. Moriah Cemetery again.  Yet, tragedy was still inevitable, though I didn’t yet know it.

I released the little duckling within a dozen yards of the geese. He immediately turned and started running back at me. I thought, “OH SHIT, he’s already imprinted on me and now I’m going to HAVE to take him home and raise him, there is no other option.” Except he kept running. Past me. Towards the car. OK, dude, you really wanna go back with me, hm? No. You want to run away from me, and we’re going around and around and around the Murano.

I did stop and think, well, I’m in a cemetery. People who are grieving do crazy things. If I don’t do this TOO long, it will just slide by and people will not come over here to figure out what in hell is going on and why this fat lady is going around and around her car with a large Contadina Tomato Paste box, scooping at the ground.

Pretty soon, the duckling figured out that the same run/hide/evade experience could be had by just going around and around the back wheel.

We did this for fifteen minutes.

Finally, I gave up.

I told myself, “Ok. I’m going to get in the car. He’s on the inside of the wheel, so I will edge forward very slowly, and he will either be adopted by the geese, he will wander off on his own, or – worst case scenario – I will run over him, but at least it will be quick.”

And I look in my rear-view mirror, fully expecting to see a wandering duckling.

Nope.

I ran over him.

Of course I did. If we were going to sustain this giant emotional snotball of a metaphor, OF COURSE I HAD TO RUN OVER THE DUCK.

I just shook my head. Went home. James came in from the yard and said, “So, how’d it go?”

I replied, “The only way it could have gone, really.” And cried in his arms.

See, I know. I KNOW this is funny in a tragi-comic sort of way. But at the same time, I marvel at my naivete. My desire to fix and solve, a desire that is untouched by reality. I don’t think I would change that part of me, there’s enough inside me that is jaded and bruised and sharp. But oh how it stung.  I thought of how the circle of life is sometimes just a car wheel.

And then, changing subjects after telling this story last night, I (completely unwittingly) said, “So! Extra Virgin is SO good. I had duck gizzards!” and everyone collapsed around me in hysterics.

Circle of life, indeed.

I just had lunch with a sales rep I’d never met before, and had already rescheduled the lunch date once. I even contemplated rescheduling again, because I’ve got a bunch to do in a short amount of time. But I decided to just relax, go have lunch, and meet her. We had a great time, and in a really odd, roundabout way, discovered we both had lost our fathers and shared similar mom relationships, the same values, politics. It was a good reminder to me that in putting oneself out there, even if it’s not your first choice of action for the day, good things often flow back.

After that lunch, I realized Mimi Murano was running, literally, on fumes. So I got to spend extra to buy my gas in Kansas, but opted to minimize the blow by filling up at CostCo. Right after I started fueling, a minivan pulled in behind me, and I realized, as I was staring into space, tiny hands were waving from the back seat at me. I waved back. The hands moved faster. I waved again. I said something to the mom, as she headed back to the driver’s seat – about how her kids were really friendly and we were waving at each other. She laughed and said they will talk to anyone, they love to talk. I told her it was pretty cute.  She got in the van for a few minutes, and then got out and told me her three-year-old daughter was begging to be let out so she could talk to me. Of course that was an unrealistic request, but it was so utterly charming. And another reminder that when you think you’re invisible, someone else might think you look like a really great person to talk to!

Last, but not least, my husband has begun ‘pre-missing’ me. He already lamented last night how much he will miss me this weekend, as I head East to St. Louis for the Spring Fling and spend four days immersed in yarn, knitting, friends and fun.  He’ll be busy, I know – selling tomato plants, continuing to churn through yard stuffs and working on the gardens, but it’s always nice to feel needed, and appreciated, and yes, when you’re gone, missed. I, in turn, have been making meals that produce plenty of leftovers so he’ll have dinner options. Though I just KNOW he’s gonna eat one of those KFC Double Down things in my absence….

Whenever I get an email or message on Facebook about a friend’s father dying, I have a millisecond moment where the air leaves my lungs and I feel that moment all over again, so visceral, so tangible, I can see the color of the sky and feel my husband’s hand on my shoulder in that moment, a moment I now share with another person. Fortunately, it’s immediately followed by a rush of sadness and empathy for my friend, and the knowledge and vision of what time can do, what time does. How I wish I could impart that knowledge as comfort, while knowing it must simply be lived and endured, marched through, sat within, processed. So I just say what wiser people told me, that it does get better, but not in that chirpingly “time heals!” sort of way, just that from the vantage point of another human being with a shared experience, yes, it does, it does get better. You don’t cry as often or as long, and eventually, you don’t cry every day. It’s not magic nor does it disappear – I realized this week I’ve been weepy at odd points in time, and I remembered that this is the time of year when we found out about my father’s cancer.  How life itself changed in that springtime evening, as you turn a corner and you don’t even know what direction you’re going, because once again, only time gives you that vision. How four years ago, I still had hope, I railed against the very notion of death, and put every ounce of my determination into seeing my father live.  While I would prefer to have him alive, surviving, ranting on the phone with me about politics or giving me advice, I must say, the greatest relief is that he never left my heart, it was my biggest fear that somehow he would fade or pieces would disappear, but I am so grateful that I can see him as vividly as if we’d just visited, I can hear his voice, his laugh, see his smirk.

I looked into the nighttime sky last week, noting that Orion was barely visible, just a glimpse of his belt over the treeline to the West. Disappearing as the seasons change, off to hunt in another hemisphere. I thought of all the nights, in the first winter months after Dad died, after the rest of the world was done grieving him and wanted me to return to my old self, a person I could never reclaim. I would stand outside and weep, remembering all the nights I’d spent staring at the stars in Iowa, these same stars  pointed out to me by my dad, how Regina Spektor sings about the stars as ‘just old light’, how the bowl above marks the same trek across the expanse, no matter what our pain or hardships.  As Orion slips away, Scorpius claims the summer sky, the scorpion that felled the great hunter, put into the sky for time eternal, and the same battles and journeys begin anew for someone here on earth.

I finished Cormac McCarthy’s book “The Road” last night.

I’m still sorting out how I feel. It was incredibly …….oh so many adjectives. Moving. Depressing. Illustrative. Gorgeously written. Imaginative. Solid. Thinking book.

This quote – I read it over and over when I arrived at it in the book.

“He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the words and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.”
— Cormac McCarthy (The Road)

It gives you an idea of the thought-provoking prose that gracefully flows from nearly every page;  my little book-reading gnomes in my brain are still sitting by the fireplace, feet up, pondering and ruminating on all the facets in this book. What I suppose I find so haunting is that the whole book, in my memory of reading it, feels so parallel to my over-arching grief process. There is sadness. There is inevitability. But through all of the darkness, there is an unbreakable strand of pure shining silvery light, the love between a parent and a child, and it isn’t the darkness that makes me cry, but the joy of still being able to see the light.

Well, y’know, what with working part-time and being frugal (usually) and meal planning and going to the doctor and thinking about all the foods we eat, what’s processed, what’s over-processed, what’s delicious, what’s not,  I started to look at my Diet Coke addiction. Even diet sodas aren’t all they’re banged up to be, apparently, but I didn’t care when I was over-stressed and trying to get through the day at the Last Place. I drank a minimum of 4/day, and on exceptionally busy days, amped that up to 6-8. Telling myself it had no sugar and all the lovely, lovely caffeine was an easy justification.  I had done a mega-stock-up, shortly before my ‘downsizing’, and I started scaling back to a couple per day.  Then I went to the doctor, where I was informed that it wasn’t the best friend I’d hoped it would be. And I felt a shift in my mind, like maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to just start here. Phase out the Diet Coke. Insert water. I’m trying to wean myself from Splenda, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. Because we also have a lot of Crystal Light hanging around the house, and I enjoy drinking that, too. Small steps. So today, I stop my regular dosing of Diet Coke. That’s not to say I won’t enjoy one if I’m out to lunch, or NEVER AGAIN will I drink Diet Coke. I just think one of the things I’ve learned/re-learned is how much better regular home-cooked foods and baked things taste, and as I get older, I’m thinking and asking myself more often, “What the hell’s in this?” (Years ago, somebody in this house bought some Hamburger Helper, and since I’m also on a mission to use UP stuff, we had that for dinner – with deer burger, I liked to call it “Venison Assistant” in my head.. anyway, omg, so salty. It fills you up b/c you’re drinking a gallon of water to balance out the sodium!)

But I’m not phasing out caffeine – I love coffee, always have, and that is my regular morning routine (even when I was slamming the Diet Cokes!) I think it’s safe to say I’ve cut back on my dependency – of recent weeks, my daily consumption was a cup of coffee and 1-2 Diet Cokes  – but I’m going to have to incorporate some extra coffee or black teas into the routine now – the withdrawal headaches are a total bitch.

So, Diet Coke, thanks for all you’ve done for me. I’ve got quite a few Coke Rewards points thanks to our years together, so once I’ve entered them all in, I know we’ll have a farewell gift to always remember you by…..

Today is NOT my friend Beth’s birthday. However, she did just return from a vacation. Yay! Beth! I am so glad you are home. It IS my dear friend friend Staci’s birthday, however, so keeses to her.

Beth is my bestest friend in the world. She shares a space in my inner circle with some wonderful people, and I must say, she is the most constant presence among these people, and we email and chat so regularly that I began to flounder when she took a vacation last week.

(Thursday)

Me: “I miss Beeeeeeeth.”
James: “When does she come back?”

Me: “This weekend but not ’til Sundaaaaaaay, oh my god she’s been gone so lonnnng.”

James: silence

Me:”NNnnnNNNNNYYEErrrrrrrrRRRR!” with dramatic flailing.

Me:”I mean, she doesn’t have internet so there are all these THINGS! She is not caught up! Like, like, does she even KNOW about the iPad? We would have talked about that. The world is moving along and THINGS are happening and we discuss those THINGS.”

James: laughs at me

I will say this, though, I had one giant rant-er-iffic meltdown with my husband over the week and he handled it fantastically.  He’s my best friend of all, of course, but we also know that girlfriends listen differently than husbands do. Bless his heart, he didn’t try to fix anything or tell me what he thought I should do, he just agreed that it was crazy, and (as always) offered to slash their tires. And he bought me some dinner and made me hot cocoa with Kahlua in it.

I’d take James and Beth into a knife fight any day.

(don’t worry, there are quite a few of you I’d bring to the party. Beth, however, would remember the tourniquets.)

Today, my dad would have been 66 years old. By some measures, still young. I’ve dreamed of him a lot lately, but then last night’s dream also included my mother and Katie Horner, so I’m not spending a lot of time interpreting things…

I miss him. I think of him every day, and now, with this gift of time, I have more perspective, a better understanding of how you do continue to live when you lose someone you love. The first months, I was convinced that without grief, he would be gone. Somehow,  losing the daily sobbing would make him fade, disappear. Then in the next wave of months, it felt like I’d been sentenced to a lifetime of wearing fractured glasses. Impossible to see anything the way it used to be, frustrated that others were blithely continuing their own existences, angry that nobody understood and everyone wanted me to be Over It. Guess what? You don’t ever get Over It. You get Through It. And it ain’t easy.

Last night, as I waited for sleep to come (and bring me both my parents plus a local meteorologist), I thought of how the gaping chasm of grief has become a fissure of melancholy. Bittersweet and deep, but it is something to be acknowledged, even appreciated, not fallen into. Today, even now, as I give voice to these things, I will weep, because the sorrow never goes. But those days are not everyday anymore.  Instead, on the ‘regular’ days, I’ll smile, a melancholy or secret smile to myself, when I say something he would have said, or laughed at, or been angry about, or railed at the idiocy of, and we share this. Inside me. When he was alive, he was outside of me, and now in death, he is in my head and my heart. Instead of always mourning, I get to celebrate what we shared, what he taught me, the gifts he gave me.  I’m grateful for those who’ve walked this path before me, who shared their perspective and wisdom, because even though I didn’t necessarily absorb it at the time, I put it in my pockets, tucked it away, because I’m a gatherer and a collector, and I knew it would be good to have down the road. Time. How greatly we want it to stand still, to not have anything change, to stave off death, loss, sadness. Yet time is what gives us relief, peace, perspective and appreciation.

Instead of just mourning his memory today, I celebrate the man who gave me so much, and even in death, still laughs when I do.

I know, like many other people, that I will be very glad to see the door close on 2009 tonight. Can’t say that I feel that way about the entire decade, of course, because countless wonderful things have happened in my life over the past ten years. I just see 2009 as a year that brought more challenges and strife than I cared to have. I shut the door on people (some shut the door on me!), I lost my job (but gained another!), and had lots of job stress and a couple really scary health scares (bronchitis, my eyes).

All of that said, though, and some of my negative thoughts about the year, I will say that this has been the year of contradictions. My job (that I lost) depressed me beyond belief – but then I got a new one that renews and energizes me.  Unemployment depressed me, but I reconnected and made new connections and feel more ensconced with fantastic, smart, creative people than any year before. And the mack-daddy depression of them all, the grief that never leaves me, my father’s death, that got better. I no longer feel like I am the lone ox, pulling the yurt with a tribe of nomads trampling it as I strain to put one foot in front of the other. There are days with great sadness, melancholy, and some tears, but there isn’t the sense of toppling over the edge into an abyss. Time truly works wonders.

I know that in time, some of the anger and frustration I absorbed and carried this year will also fade. But now, in the moment? I’ve got a special Fuck You to a few people, and while I don’t think they read my blog, but if they do? They should be bright enough to know it’s meant just for them. Enjoy, motherfuckers. Karma’s a bitch.

As for the rest of you twatweasels I know, love and look forward to laughing with next year? Happy New Year, and I love ya. Thanks for reading and all the comments. 2010 is gonna rock.