Sick...

In the wake of Senator Obama's visit to Colorado, in high spirits and enjoying the mellifluous peace that we were going to secure a leader for this country whose work as President would be revolutionary, ingenious, historically significant, one huge black mark crashed through my day today.

It started with a Fox News report (how better to know my enemy than to read their news?) on a couple of white supremacists arrested by the FBI for attempting to enact a plot to kill Senator Obama as the "final target" on a list of 88 murders and 14 decapitations of black people. The list includes black schoolchildren. Apparently no one is too young for the psychotic notions of super-racists.

Are you listening to me?!?!?! SCHOOLCHILDREN!!! What is going on here? As much as I hate to say it, Senator Obama is probably more aware of the dangers to his life and the liabilities facing the decision he made to run for President than any other Presidential candidate in history...the only reason being that we are NOT a coclor-blind population. As much as we would like to say we are, we're not. I don't think I'm exaggerating in saying that any non-Caucasian person in this country has a sense of that, grows up with it, understands it. We'd love to be. But we're not. Let's get honest here.

One particularly terrifying, and yet somewhat gratifying, part of the New York Times article I picked up on the would-be killers: "The two men “planned to drive their vehicle as fast as they could toward Obama shooting at him from the windows,” according to an affidavit filed in federal court in Jackson, Tenn., by an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Mr. Obama has no plans to be in Tennessee, and the affidavit does not make clear whether the men had picked a location for an attack."

Terrifying because: people are actually planning to try to assassinate Obama. I remember remarking on the presence of the Secret Service at the Denver rally, "What's the worst thing that could happen right now?" and all of us nodding and reluctantly acknowledging the horror of that idea.

Gratifying because: the FBI is really ON TOP OF IT. They caught onto these guys before their plan even reached an advanced stage. Also because they're so clearly ignorant morons that they wouldn't have gotten far...drive their vehicle as fast as they could and shoot at Obama through the windows? Um, last I knew, the Secret Service had that plan anticipated, and clearly thought out, and had plenty of contingency plans to deal with such an incident. Obama didn't have plans to campaign in Tennessee, and while future development might show they intended to strike elsewhere, all we know now if that they were planning this attack from home turf.

And then...nauseating, because...how does anyone, anywhere, anytime, justfiy killing children?

Obama/Biden 08. Vote!

Law of the American Jungle

First, there was the pre-dawn wake-up call, our alarms clattering noisily, rousing us from our comfortable slumber. Our bodies didn't want to respond at all. Being up this early was completely foreign on this day of the week, and they didn't like it one bit. Somehow, we got ourselves to the bus on time.

Then it was the bus ride to Denver, packed in with crowds of people RTD doesn't usually see on this line, during this day of the week. The decision had been sent down from dispatch, our driver informed us, to run more buses that day. We'd secured seats and were still trying to wake up, and I pitied--though not enough to give up my seat, selfish child that I can be--those who had to stand for the entire hourlong ride.

Then there was the wait in the line, which moved every so often, only to reveal more line. Finally we neared the park. There were metal detectors to pass through, Secret Service and Denver Police officers patting people down, coins and phones to remove from pockets, bags to be searched. A woman beside me groaned, remembering her artificial knee. Making our way through the park, we stopped at what was then the edge of the crowd, a good 60-70 yards from the podium. We grumbled about having a lousy view and prepared for our next wait. It would be another hour and a half before the rally even began, and the crowds were packing in.

Standing on my tiptoes, I could only see if a few hundred people tilted their heads just so. And even then, only a glimpse of the podium, the teleprompter, the speaker. Bitter-cold breeze blowing. Feet stamping. Trying to warm up.

By the end of the day, we were sunburned. Fatigued. Cold. Achy. Claustrophobic.

Faced with an imminent need to empty our bladders.

And yet, the Law of the American Jungle still applied: stay calm, and share your bananas. We weren't necessarily calm; it was a political rally, for goodness' sake, "calm" isn't the point. But we were joyful. We were exuberant. We were smiling and joking and laughing. We were befriending those around us, sharing the latest negative-campaigning gossip, heartily congratulating a woman nearby when she said she was a lifelong Republican who not only had converted but was out helping with voter regiatration, getting people to early voting, helping in any way that she could. A woman forgot her camera, so she gave me her email address so that I could send her our pictures. She and her friends shared their trail mix with us when they broke it out. We all laughed over the $150,000 wardrobe scandal, we shored up our reserves and we discussed tactics to get our friends and loved ones who were Republican or undecided to consider our candidate. It was awesomely Democratic; as far as I can tell, the only thing Republicans do when they rally--in, thankfully, waning numbers--is shout crude, vitriolic psycho-babble like "Drill, baby, drill!" Republican gatherings look like the crowd at the AARP claims office: a bunch of old angry white men. Democratic gatherings have a decidedly more American flavor: people of every shape, size, color, age, sexual orientation, you name it, are there. The rally was actually representative of the American population, rather than representative of Old Johnny's Cronies. Moving on...

When our local politicians took the stage, we cheered them on. When they incited the crowd for responses, we hollered readily. My boyfriend, the designated photographer, snapped dozens of photos, mostly of a sea of people, a podium, a figure speaking, and a huge white building as the backdrop. He snapped pictures of the Secret Service snipers on the roof of the county building, and we all murmured acknowledgment that if the absolute worst were to happen, that's what they were there for.

And then he took the stage, and the crowd roared. Gracious, brilliant, and inspiring, we listened as he outlined his promise for change, his heartfelt gratitude for our presence, and yes, a bit of tearing into his opponent. But mostly, his hopes for our great nation. His plan to wean us from foreign oil without bankrupting the seas and poisoning the environment, to free us from the burdensome toils of the broken healthcare system, to get us out of this horrid downward-spiraling economy. To alleviate the middle class of the fear of foreclosures for a few months, until people can get back on their feet and begin paying their mortgages.

His speech was profoundly eloquent, yet humbled; he was spirited, passionate and driven without sinking to the depths the Republicans have in their attacks on him. He took a few shots at McCain but mostly he talked about what he was going to do, not what his opponent was not going to do. His hopes and dreams for our country, not his opponent's, or how wrong they are, or how evil he is. Which for me, would be difficult (which is, among other reasons, why I won't be making a bid for the White House anytime soon).

He encouraged us, and his enthusiasm was infectious. He spoke with such integrity and honesty that I found myself, 3/4 of the way through his speech, swallowing a big lump in my throat, brushing away tears, out of nowhere. And then at the end, he thanked us all. Imagine that: he thanked us.

Nine days. Nine electoral votes. Please, Colorado, my adopted home, don't let me and the other 100,000+ people gathered in support of Barack Obama today down. Don't give in to terror tactics and fears drummed up by the same crazy people who brought us the last eight years of economic horror, war, corporate buyouts, healthcare crises, and abject terrorist activities carried out in the name of this country. It can be better, and he can make it so.

Elect President Barack Obama.

Profoundly Influential: RIP William R. Barrowclough

My little sister Emily called me at 5:30 this morning. When I picked up she assumed she'd woken me and said something about it being two hours earlier here and apologizing for waking me up, but I'd been up for at least an hour and a half by then and was only planning on writing this blog and doing some online work. We got to talk for about twenty minutes--a rarity between me and Emily, in part because of the distance between us and in part because of the distance between us. She lives 2000 miles away, but she might as well be on the moon. Our lives are as separate as they could possibly be, and while this saddens me at my egotistical, self-indulgent faux core, it makes my heart a little warmer and my soul a little happier knowing that she's well, she's doing okay, her life is good. She amazes me: she has been through just about every terrifying circumstance and situation possible, from watching friends commit suicide as early as junior high to our father's death a year ago today and way above and beyond even that spectrum which, to me, is pretty broad. Some of the events I know of, some I probably don't, and some I only have sketchy details of, either from our worry-stricken mother or much more casual conversations with Emily where she tells me everything she can but mostly tells me she's going to be okay. I believe her, because she's survived everything. She absolutely blows me away. She's my hero and my best friend, in many ways, my confidante and my absolute favorite person to do just about anything with, and at the same time, I often feel like I don't know her at all: don't know the people in the pictures she posts on myspace or facebook, don't know the friends she's made in Charlotte, don't know what her work is like, who she gets along with there, if she likes her boss, if she gets any fulfillment from what she's doing...and she doesn't know most of this stuff about me. So hearing from her, especially this morning, was really good. I got some bad news I was otherwise unaware of, and I got some good news: I got to hear her order her morning coffee (a small skim mocha with an extra shot, from a coffee shop run by Habitat for Humanity near where she works), got to hear her thanking people and the apologetic sorry-I'm-on-the-phone sound in her voice when she was talking to people at the coffee shop and had me on the line (it's the same tone my voice takes on), got to hear her ripping a little into Sarah Palin, which I enjoyed greatly, though shortly, since I dominated the conversation from then on with a recount of a recent karma spree and then she had to go because she was at work, but it was still good to hear from her. I'm pretty sure every day would be a little bit better if I heard from Emily, because every day I do is.

Our father died a year ago today, which was the original subject of this blog post. At this time--especially at this time, with the political and economic mayhem currently taking place in our country and possibly the most important Presidential election in United States history about to unfold--I wish Dad were still alive, but there isn't a day that goes by that I don't. When big things happen: Emily goes through something tough (any of the things I will be broadly and blandly vague about because I know she doesn't want me writing about them on my blog), another member of our very close, very small family struggles with alcohol and drug abuse, I'm unemployed for a month and horribly depressed by it, I have a seizure because of an accidental overdose of a supposedly safe medication, I meet and move in with the love of my life, we learn to live on a dollar-eighty-seven or so a week because we're so badly in the hole and in such poor shape to do anything about it, my major love before now gets married, I turn 27 years old, my sister turns 24, and somewhere in the middle of that we miss a birthday: Dad would have been 68 this year, and the stress of missing him on that day buckles my knees at work and leaves me clutching the counter in front of me, eyes and mouth filling all at once. There's a sense of drowning that accompanies profound grief, and I wonder how many people have experienced that, have written or talked or expressed it aloud, the intense fury of an internal storm so big that for a moment it threatens the life and safety of the whole ship, and just when you begin to pull apart at the seams, it calms. The winds die down, you stop feeling like your guts are trying to escape their worldly anchors and you move on, limping, sometimes, slightly. You can breathe and see again, though sometimes through a glimmer of tears, and you know that you're going to survive, even though it seemed like--only a moment ago--the hole in your life was going to cave in and swallow you forever. The absence of a parent, of a father. Like I'm qualified to write about this. Well, I am absent a father, so I guess that qualifies me. For a year now. It actually happened on a Sunday; it was Sunday, October 7, 2007, and I had been waiting for the phone call all weekend. They'd told me on Thursday or Friday that his systems were shutting down, and that his liver was failing completely. That was when it really hit me: my dad is going to die, it's going to happen soon, and there's nothing I can do about it. I am thousands of miles away from my family while this is happening and so I can't even be there with him. He told me the whole time he was going to beat it, and so, like everything else he ever told me, I couldn't believe it when it wasn't absolutely, undeniably true. When I was a kid, my dad always told me how much he loved me, how beautiful I was. I wasn't much for combing my hair or keeping clothes pretty--I was a tomboy from the start, and Emily too, and he loved that--so I wasn't really much for mirrors, either, and until I was a gape-toothed, stringy-limbed preadolescent, I'd never really looked in one. When I did, I was horrified. I remember thoroughly feeling that I was intensely, terribly ugly, with my gapped teeth and enormous glasses and upturned piglike nose, my chapped lips and my lack of chest, or nubs, or anything that would positively identify me as woman. I was so, so ugly, and infuriated with my father: how dare he lie to me like that! He told me my whole life how I was so beautiful, and I wasn't, not at all, not even a little!!! I wa sso angry about it I never brought it up with him. And I feel like I lost a huge chunk of my innocence that day.

Of course, I grew up...and now, at 27, can feel beautiful, even when I am feeling fat and ugly and wretched and even when other people are telling me how wretched I look or am acting, and I can be quite wretched, and I know this, and I've moved beyond the mirror that haunted me through puberty and stalked me well into teenhood, and I can handle the fact that while I'd like to lose 20 pounds to be in better shape as a runner, I am still in damned good shape as a 5'7", 155-lb. woman. I can see more of what my father really meant when I was growing up and less of what I saw in that terrible mirror, but I still feel the zing of that betrayal, the shock of that realization. It was the same way I felt on October 4, 5, and 6 of last year: numbed, but true, I was coming to terms with the fact that my father was dying. And so when my brother called me to give me the news, when I first heard his cracking voice through the receiver of my phone, saying, "Don?" and me "Yeah?" and he "He's gone." and heard the pitched sob he held back from crying out into the phone to me, maybe because he was holding his baby son, maybe because he didn't want to break down and was trying to hold it together for me, maybe because he was already flush with tears and had seen his world tear apart already as he watched our father take his last breaths, he held it back, and the world came undone anyway. The most important thing my dad ever told me: I'm going to beat this, was no longer true, and while I tried very hard to see the beauty inside of it: he wasn't sick anymore, he wasn't hurting anymore, he wasn't in pain anymore, he was in a better place, he was going to heaven or to meet God or to an afterlife that would be such a great improvement over this one, while I try to see that beauty to this day, I still feel shocked, betrayed, undone, that he left us. He left us, dammit! How dare he! And I stomp my selfish, egotistical foot and think of everything he's missed in my life since: meeting the love of my life, dealing with the shakiest employment year I've ever had, standing up to my cruel and deceitful boss at my former employer and winning, having a seizure, getting fatter than I've ever been, realizing how much Jeremy really loves me, and is willing to put up with, for me, my 27th birthday, my introduction to and love for the world of aerial arts, training for my third marathon, the 2008 election and the possibility of real hope and change, and the very real possibility of the horror of four MORE years of Republican hell, or even, I daresay, eight. Hockey season starting, autumn in Carolina and Colorado, telling him how much I miss him on the phone, talking politics in heated discussions that last for hours and leave both of us with grumbly tummies as our dinners have gone cold but full of mindful inspiration and joy, that we could come together and talk and agree and disagree and love each other so much over something so important. And so unimportant. Next to something like the former love of my life, the only man I loved enough to bring home to South Carolina to meet my entire family, all the siblings and my father, the importance of that, and of letting him go entirely, of finding out that my old love, who had long since had found his true love, was getting married, got married, sent me wedding photos. He missed that! He missed Bob's wedding. How dare he! How dare he!

And then I think of the things he's going to miss: my wedding, my children, if I ever have any, the same for Emily, the rest of the years of my life, and I start to feel very young and upset and confused. And selfish. And I cry and yell and scream even though it doesn't do any good, and even though I know it's never going to do any good. The print publication of my first writing. The actual upcoming election, and his vote, that won't be counted in it. The chance to meet, get to know, affirm the love of my life, admire him, enjoy his company, welcome him into our family. The pictures from Bob's wedding. My third marathon. My workdays at the medical center, and Emily's at her medical center, and hundreds and hundreds of New Jersey Devils games to come. And I break.

I should have taken today off: if I had any kind of option to do so, I would have. I'm a teary disaster, and a teary disaster who needs a shower and fresh clothes and a few minutes to think and maybe read my email and the news before heading off to work for the day, and since I'm running out of time--and for the sake of my loyal readers, who may or may not have doggedly followed me through this one--I'll end this here and go do that. It's 6:55 in the morning in Colorado, and the sun is coming up. Dad died in the middled of the afternoon, so he was still alive a year ago now. I wonder what he was thinking, or feeling, or seeing. I wonder--selfishly--if he knew how much I love him, and how much I would miss him. I wonder if he was sad, or upset, or in pain, and I hope he wasn't, because no matter how great the struggle, how mighty the storm, how ferocious the waters that swirl around us become, the sun keeps coming up, the days keep passing and, amazing though it seems, life goes on, even without him. My dad loved life so much it's hard for me to believe he let go easily. But I hope, kind of, in the end, that he was at peace with it. I'm not; well, sometimes, I am, but most of the time I'm not, and I have the rest of my life to ferociously love and be unwilling to let go of, to fight for and work for and struggle for and make peace with, to enjoy and contemplate and always, always find the beauty in.

After my brother called me and we spoke a little, after talking to my sister awhile, a year ago this afternoon, I went outside with my camera and took pictures of the day. It was a marvelous fall day in Colorado, and a storm was blowing in, the winds mightily whirling the turning leaves and wintering branches of trees about, and I took photos of the storm, of the trees, of the bright shining sun, of everything in the world around me changing, always, into something even more beautiful.

I love you, Daddy. I love you so much.

a rare photo of all of the siblings together: left to right, my stepsister Heather, my half-adopted sister Gerie, my half-brother BJ, me, my little sister Emily, at BJ's house after our father's memorial service last year

PS While I realize it's probably impossible, especially after reading this last rather warped and warbled view of things, to convince anyone of this: I am as equally thrilled at the times I did have with my father, if not more so, as I am about all of the things I miss about him, and will miss sharing with him. More on that later...have to run to work now...

Declaring A Winner

This evening millions of Americans tuned in to NBC for the official broadcast of the debate between vice Presidential candidates Democratic Senator Joe Biden and Republican Governor Sarah Palin. Within moments after, and likely during the entirety of the debate, the pundits were spitting and snarling, tearing apart the attacks and the defenses, the weapons and the malfeasances. Doing what pundits do: generating a lot of hubbub about a nicely intelligent, rather surprisingly well-presented debate. What pisses me off, of course, is "who won?"

The answer will undoubtedly be Sarah Palin. This doesn't bother me as much as the reason for the answer, though. Sarah Palin won because she didn't suck.

She didn't falter--as badly as she has in the past--and she didn't coin anymore cheesy catch phrases. She didn't present herself as irrational, illogical or even incapable. And this, my friends, was enough to make her "win".

Right. She didn't suck. So she won. Joe Biden presented--as usual--a well-developed, clearly outlined--if sometimes muddled with varied interests and concerns--argument, but he won't be declared the winner, because his opponent, who was expected to, as she has in the past few weeks, make political gaffe after gaffe, continue to do so. And she didn't.

When we declare the winner of a debate by the degree of improvement from lack of intellect and logic to ability to recite facts, names and dates, occasionally drop a crowd-pleasing line for the good ol' boys, and continue to mispronounce "nuclear" in an apparent attempt to change Merriam-Webster's pronunciation of the word to George W. Bush's, over the polished, professional and brilliant oration of a seasoned political genius, we have declared ourselves a population dominated by its most blatant stupidity. No longer interested in effecting change or creating actual reform, we hang onto blunted catch phrases and repetitive commentaries, and we declare ourselves an educated mass. We are satisfied with the collective input of the lowest common denominator, and it will be reflected by the generations to come.