March 2012 is on notice as my undisputed bitch.

Effective today, it is (approximately, exact dates still made flexible by the landlord) T-minus 50 days until I can begin my move, and T-minus 59 days until it must be complete, with the carpets, ovens, windows, et al cleaned and shiny and T-minus about 65 days until I depart for my alphabetically organized vacation from Boston, to London, to Paris and to Rome.

I actually just got tired writing that.

In the next two months, and with no vacation time to speak of (each and every minute being saved for the afor mentioned vacation) I will have to pack a lifetime worth of books and three years of accumulated fabric, yarn, needles, paints, etc… There’s the task of shoving my inordinate amount of clothing and shoes into bags and boxes and disassembling my kitchen.

When we moved into this apartment, we did it with everything we owned and had purchased to run the place, leaving very few things yet to be bought, but in the years since, the requisite amount of crap has been accumulated.  I’ve turned over my clothing supply three or four times, some of it no longer fitting and getting stashed away, some of it (though not as much as I should have, probably) getting tossed away.  Sheets, blankets, pillows, toiletries, gift wrap, planting supplies, computers, art…all of the little things that you don’t really think about packing and moving.  OY!

Given the overlap between losing my lease here and taking over my lease there, the moving process will happen a bit slowly, a couple of boxes loaded into the car at the end of the night, then dropped at the new place each day so they can be unloaded there, reloaded here and put back in the car for the process to be repeated again and again.  I think I can get the books, the clothes and most of the dishes moved this way.  Leaving only a couple of “big runs” to be made over the weekend.  Which, ought to free us up to move the bed, the mattress, the book cases, the night stands, the couch, the vintage singer, the two full size tables, the comfy chairs the…crap, I have a lot of furniture! Plus, the eliptical!

In other news, who is glad she has a dad with a Jeep and an enclosed trailer???  Also, I’m hoping the trip down the two flights of stairs will be a lot easier than the trips up them to move in.  The new place, thank god, is all one story but I still suspect that more than a few batches of cupcakes are going to go into convincing my family to offer their assistance.

Still, as planned as my move is, my trip is still entirely left up to chance.  I know precisely what I want to do in London but Paris and Rome?  The sky becomes the limit – as long as one can reach the sky in three days – and I have no idea what I’ll do while i’m there beyond getting terribly fat and taking tons of pictures

For those of you in Europe, those of you’ve traveled to Europe and that one of you who has been invited to attend, what to do?  What to see?

I’ve been having a tough time sleeping for the last week or so.  I’m sick and on medication so I’ve blamed it on not being able to breathe or get properly comfortable but my dreams have been far more disturbed than my waking hours – a lifetime worth of boys visiting me in my sleep.  I haven’t really had much luck retaining any of the details, waking up in the morning with a vague sense of either discontent or pleasure instead and a sense, from the feeling rather than from my memory, of who I’d spent the last eight hours with.  Generally, it means an hour long shower trying to get the skeeze off or music turned up so loud as to drown out the voices rattling in that precious space between my ears.  This morning, I’d have given anything to hang, suspended, in that split second just after I open my eyes, where the dream merges with reality and, for just that moment, everything is perfect and my boys exist in the same reality.

King’s death has always been tough for me.  it was a sudden suicide (when Mike told me, after the initial disbelief passed, the first words I uttered were “He never died before,”) and, while there was a funeral that ranks in the top ten worst days of my life (sorry love, not even time and perspective have put you in the top five,) I’ve always struggled with the fact that Sis didn’t bury him anywhere.  Like Spike, she cremated him and kept the ashes.  Other than Kemper, there is no “place” I can go to prove to myself that he really is gone except for that sad little dark spot in my heart that misses him and I carry that headstone with me always.

If you had told me ten years ago it was King I would miss the most – miss more than Colin, miss more than Brian, long for so hard that I would wake up from dreams feeling as if I’d only just been wrapped in one of those tight, bony hugs – I would have laughed at you.  It isn’t to say that King wasn’t a presence in my life – he was a force.  King was the only person I ever met who shared that uncanny kinack to see people – to tell you their life story within ten minutes of meeting them without ever having asked….I know, because he did it to me and I did it right back.  Over the years, he hurt me so hard but never so completely as when he left us all here.

I miss his insights.  I miss his honesty.  I miss the way he used to toy with me – that little smirk that made me certain he knew exactly what he was doing, and with equal certainty that he was the only one.  (Took a while, but you’re not anymore, kiddo.  Sorry.  It’s what you get for dying.)

In the end of his life, I walked away from him.  I think there’s a part of me that knew there was no other way his story would end and couldn’t watch it.  Still, when I snap awake from dreams, always somehow begging him for just one more hug and just a few more minutes before he goes, I wonder what I missed, what lessons he might have taught me and how many more hugs I might have gotten if I’d been brave enough to stand the outcome so up close.

And then I man up, put on my big girl undies and go do the dishes but, for a minute, I remember what it was like to have him and my heart breaks for missing him so much.

I’ve been neglecting the internet of late.  It’s kind of really easy for me to do from time to time, for good reason or for bad, but it also makes it easy to feel disconnected from my friends.  Of late though, I’ve also been a little disconnected from living in favor of life (if you take that meaning.)

I don’t do New Years Resolutions, really, but here are some of the experiences I want to have in the year – and years – to come.

The key, for me, to getting through rough times tends to be perspective and sales.  I focus on something positive and then tell myself why it’s the most awesome thing ever until I’m over my funk.  this one I’ve been in lately has been much harder to kick.  There is nothing wrong to get over, there’s nothing to talk myself out of or into.  Life has been on change over-drive for months and, while I’m about to re-enter that phase, I am currently in an awkward period of waiting between breaths.

To compound things, I’ve been incredibly disconnected from the people in my life and the disconnection keeps getting worse.  The positivity I’d focused on the holidays this year began to crumble right about the time my mother announced that my entire extended family would be spending the holidays tailgating at a football game.  (I’ll let that one marinate a minute while you try to picture someone like me willingly going to a Green Bay game on December 25th in the dead of a Wisconsin winter.)  Needless to say, it leaves me feeling a little bit left out.

Those are some of the things that make me sad.  These are some of the things that it makes me happy to look forward to.

1. Cyber Monday sales.  I need a Rumba and a second TV.
2. The first (hopefully fleeting) snow.  I’m so enjoying the wonderful weather we’re having lately, but I’m also looking forward to that first snowfall.  I want to go for a walk on the lakefront and stop at a tree farm for some mistletoe and holly.
3. Getting to go furniture shopping.  I’m moving in March.  In addition to recovering my couch (grey tweed anyone?) I also get to scour the local thrifts, antique, and resale shops for some great mid-century stuff.  I need side tables, probably a dresser, kitchen chairs, a rocker maybe…
4. Peppermint tea.  It is oh-so-tasty.
5. Guilty pleasure movies.  I’ve been on a major hunt lately.  I still need some more and I look forward to finding them.
6. Being done with my dental work.  I still have a lot more appointments but I’m looking forward to having it done.  It was such a relief when Mike’s was finished and mine is certainly not as extensive but i still thing it will be nice.
7. Hardwood floors.  (OK, I’ll stop gloating about the house now.)
8. Decorating Christmas Cookies.  There is no holiday I won’t decorate cookies for, but Christmas cookies sound fun.
9. Glitter
10. Fresh flowers.  I’mma buy some today.

When you’re me (and you have a handful of paid professionals regularly assuring you that you have what is known as Generalized Anxiety Disorder) it’s super easy to identify four single emotions – happy, depressed, keyed-up and livid.  Music makes me happy, silence makes me depressed, everything makes me keyed-up/anxious and work makes me livid.  That’s it.

Internet, I can’t tell you how useless those four identifiers are.

The last few weeks, I’ve been living, as I call it “on the ceiling.”  My anxiety is no longer fluctuating with the ebb and flow of life as it should.  That’s the thing about Generalized Anxiety Disorder.  A normal persons anxiety level looks a lot like a roller coaster – up and down and perhaps from zero to sixty in 2.5 seconds flat, but still a steady up and down.  A person with, what I’ve come to call, ohGAwD! lives more on a mountain.  There may be small peaks and valleys, but it’s a steady climb upward to an apex of flip-the-fuck-out.  The peaks are moments of panic and the valleys only exist to allow the body and brain a brief break from the norepinephrine bath.  They don’t manifest in flickers of manic happiness – happy tends to come within the moments of high-anxiety, when you have the presence of mind to parlay that panic into dance or laughter or silliness.  Rather, they become states of literal depression.  It can feel like sensory deprivation – your psyche so exhausted from hyper-awareness that it shuts off pieces of who you are to stem the flow.  I don’t feel tired, I just can’t.  Can’t move.  Can’t be bothered to eat.  Can’t be bothered to care.  Sometimes, it reaches the point where even typing is an unwelcome burden upon my resources.

I’ve been living on the uphill climb for a few weeks now and it’s been exactly the struggle you would imagine it to be.  A year ago, in this same state, I would have simply identified myself as “in the crazy place” but, knowing more about what it is that causes these types of spins, I’m better able to adapt and better able to stop them from being so bad.

Life, of late, has been about a good deal of change and choices.  I admitted to Grace a few days ago that I feel as if, at some point in the last six months, I grew up without noticing.  My house is still a mess, don’t misunderstand, and I still love childish things but as a person who has been fiscally responsible since the ripe old age of twelve and has no kids, there wasn’t as easy a barometer for me to say “I’m an adult now.”  It was a big change when I got rid of the crazy, fucked up friends, but I didn’t feel like an adult then – just a different kind of a kid.  It was a big change when I took the grown up job, but I felt like I was masquerading as an adult there as well.  I often tease that I feel all other people my age are adults whereas I am just a kid, cleverly disguised.  To a certain extent, that may still be true but, somewhere in the last few months, there was a pivotal shift.

I’ve become the kind of person who makes the right choices, not only for myself and for the people around me but for the right reason and with much less resentment.  I’ve become the kind of person who can take it.  I asked Mike to leave because I believed and believe it was the right decision for both of us and I did it knowing he may hate me, knowing he may resent me, knowing I may be destroying what was left of our relationship.  I still know that may happen at any moment and, while I won’t go so far as to say thats “OK,” I know that if it happens I will be OK.  I’ve become the kind of person who can seriously look at setting aside the past – at taking it out of the box, dealing with it and, maybe not disposing of it but at least putting it back.  I may not be able to <i>do it</i> yet, but looking at returning to the scene of so many crimes is no longer a “maybe someday” wish, it is a tangible reality that I know, if I decide to dedicate the time to, I can overcome.

Thing is, there is no part of adulthood that makes any of that OK, so I’ve been living at a steady eight on the freaked out scale with no proper word to identify it for weeks.  It’s felt like anxiety but, if I’m being honest, I felt I had no right to anxiety.  Mike and I are doing very well.  There are difficulties, there are times when I’m not sure if we’re going to make it another week – when I’m afraid he’s seconds from bolting – but the overall vote, for me any way, is a thumbs up.  A good deal on a nice house to rent has fallen into my lap.  I am learning a skill that, while scary, has been so much easier than I was afraid it would be.  While the people in my life who I expected to be supportive weren’t necessarily the ones who showed up, the ones that did have been phenomenal.  I don’t feel entitled to feel bad.  In a bad economy, I make exceptional money which affords me opportunities to grasp at so many things that I want – at more education, at comfortable easy life, and at dream vacations.  I have choices.  I am not stuck.

It sounds silly for a master of all things verbal to struggle for the word to accurately describe an emotion but it’s taken me three weeks to find one.  I am trepidatious.  I have trepidation.  I am feeling quite cautious and afraid – like a three year old wanting to hide behind her mother’s leg before day care, I am still standing at the edge of so many things, uneasy about taking that step forward.  I don’t think there will ever come a time in my life when that sensation feels foreign but, as usual, having accurately identified the problem, the anxiety is melting away – it’s become an enemy I can face.

This post has existed, in my head and on my dash, for quite some time.  It is one that has both been difficult to pen and important to write.

American politics has two parties – Democrats and Republicans.  Everyone else is an Independent.  In this day in age, Democrats are willy-nilly spenders who want to abolish religion, take your guns and force birth control on your four year old while Republicans are gun-toting, Bible belt, backwoods , bad spellers who want to ensure vanilla marriage is always protected.  For Americans, whether or not they know it, “Independent” has become the new “Middle Class”.  It’s the moniker assigned to everyone, not by their beliefs, their values or their government but by themselves.  It is, in short, the epitome not of reasoned responses but of mediocrity and compromise.  It isn’t the rational choice, it’s the socially acceptable way to avoid making one.

Still, at the same time, our own political system is fracturing further.  Republicans break into the Tea Party (read: people who don’t like taxes) and Social Conservatives (read: religious people.)  Democrats faction into Progressives (read: conspiracy theorists), Libertarians (read: constitutional purists, except for women and African-Americans) and your basic Liberal (read: pinko-communists).

I grew up in a pro-Choice household that owned guns (though they were fairly uninteresting to 75% of us).  My parents were small business owners.  My mother identifies as bi-sexual and studied theology in college with the intention of becoming a minister in the Lutheran church.  (These things actually happened in the opposite order ;P) They both grew up in a rural area.  My mother is the child of an underemployed German-Irish alcoholic and a devoutly Christian mother.  My father was raised by an over employed German-Irish alcoholic and a WASP of a mother.  Both of my grandfathers came from that which most of the German-Irish did back then – nothing.  I was raised in private schools with the children of doctors, lawyers, dentists and politicians, yet my teachers had a heavy investment in social issues and raised us carefully.

In short, I received what is either the most well-rounded political upbringing, or the most chaotic.

For myself, I am extremely well educated and have been gifted with a brilliant mind (and humility too!)  I am female.  I’ve been patted on the head and called precocious by what I’m certain will become Presidential candidates in the next 10 years.  At least once or twice a year, I receive a personal phone call from a Senator asking a question about an e-mail or a letter I wrote on behalf of a cause or an organization I believe in.  I read bills.  I watch C-SPAN.  I do my best to engage even the un-engagable in our political process, even if it is only to bend them to my will.  I vote with all of the fervor demanded by such a sacred duty.  I read books.  I think.  I absorb information. I have a small, rubber globe I periodically throw at my television during floor fights and Presidential debates.

Politically, I believe in pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, but I also believe in not cutting people off at the knees.  I believe that the US government, if no where else on earth, should be aspirational – should be about hope.  I believe that every child, regardless of their societal birthright, are entitled to the same education my parents struggled to give me access to.  I believe that in the richest nation on earth, no one should go hungry.  I believe in science.  I believe in space travel.  I believe in discovery for discovery’s sake.  I believe in choice for every man and woman capable of making it.  I believe that inaction is choice, too.  I believe in a government that doesn’t regulate my thoughts, my ideals, or my actions unnecessarily.  I believe it is only necessary when my pursuit of happiness jeopardizes someone else life or liberty.  I believe in free speech, even for stupid people.  (Though, I’ll say, I really believe we should educate the stupid out of them.)  I believe in keeping what you earn and earning what you have.

Where does that leave me?  Who does that make me?  I am not a Democrat but I am not a Republican and I refuse to jump on the bandwagon of the self-defined Average Independent.

It’s a situation made all the more glaring by the people that I spend the majority of my time with.  I work for a Fortune 500 company who manufactures heavy equipment in what I try to affectionately refer to as a “Purple” state.  If you can imagine, the people drawn to work at such a place are former mechanics and farmers who enjoy spending their weekends downing cases of Miller and hunting.  They spend their days chatting about their latest acquisition of fire power or newest brew.  If you’re lucky, a handful will possess an Associates Degree, yet at least 50% have one DWI.  They call themselves gun-toting rednecks and they wear that moniker like a badge of honor.  Most of them are parents, many the single breadwinner, all barely scraping at the bottom of middle class (a number perilously close to the poverty line) and yet, if asked, each one of them would defend to the death their vote for a candidate that advocates tax breaks on corporations like the one that we work for…tax breaks that allow them to accrue (and deduct, I’m sure) $50,000 in travel expenses for a single mid-level manager in a six month period, jetting back and forth from my purple state to Italy.  These people have children who will spend their lives in public schools and yet they advocate cutting teacher salaries.  They place the product of our fisheries and forests on their tables and call dinner with the same breath that they advocate mining that will contaminate those precious streams and pieces of land.

They are, to me, the biggest contradiction.  I grew up with staunch Republicans – truly middle class practitioners whose high six figure salaries were protected and directly grown by the Bush Tax Cuts.  I understand them.  I disagree fundamentally, but I understand them.  To look at those people whose very families my approach to spending, government, taxes and politics would benefit most and have them fight me is perplexing and frustrating to say the least.

I find myself, a couple times a month, spilling over at these people with statements like “I don’t have kids but if and when I do they will have the same rarefied, private education that I was afforded because I am grateful for it every single day.  I will never benefit from the system that I pay into but if asked tomorrow if I would contribute another percent of my hard-earned income to public schools, I would gladly volunteer and I would do it for your kid.  Aren’t you supposed to be on this side of the argument?” (We’ll stay away from the fact that I regularly hear things like “If there’s a shoot out at the grocery store, damn it, I want my gun!” because the only response I ever seem to conjure is “We live two blocks apart – where the hell are you grocery shopping?“)

I believe that those of us who can should, and we should for the benefit for those who can’t and of those who weren’t afforded the resources.  This year when, instead of a tax return, I get a bill from the IRS it will pain my cheap ass beyond measure to pay it, knowing that there are people in my life who don’t work for anything – their home, their clothes, their car payments, their Starbucks addiction and their take-out habit – who will get $10,000 or more in Federal refunds.  In truth, I probably won’t be able to speak to them again until spring has turned into summer and they’ve blown through their free nest egg- on tanning, on cigarettes, on motorcycle payments and a new TV or another $700 dog – but I won’t vote for Rick Perry, Mitt Romney or our good buddy Newt in the 2012 election to rectify the situation either.  Instead, I’ll write another letter, I’ll make another phone call, I’ll send another e-mail and I’ll urge my representatives in this Republic to close the loophole that allowed this laziness to fester and I’ll ask them to route that funding back into science and education and hope and dreams and I’ll wait for the next election cycle to figure out what it is that I am because the hope still lives, the work still goes on, the cause still endures and, for me at least, the dream shall never die.

If you thought that last post started in a strange place for where it ended, it’s because it did. It was originally entitled Birthdays and Book Reviews because that’s what this weekend has been about but it felt a little strange to wander off the path in a post about reverence to talk about blanket forts. Totally “Kay,” I’ll grant you, but still a little strange, so I split them in two, but one can’t exist without the other (or you won’t know that I quit NaNoWriMo ) So, ya know, go back and read this, I’ll wait….

Mike and I are in an ongoing process of, as I’ve come to call it, redistricting. I districted him to another zip code – out of love, internet! out of love! – in order to keep the peace. I think everyone who has been in a relationship for more than a couple of years knows how easy it can be for things to become all about the practical. It’s money and messes and all of a sudden you wake up and there is nothing else. After eleven years, the contentment you felt becomes complacency and that too quickly gives way to contempt.

People can, and do, regularly judge me for the decision that we made – for the decision that I, fundamentally, made. Some people, I think, are envious, whether they know it or not – either that I now get to live a life I want or that I had the guts to go through wih a difficult decision, I’m not sure. Other people seem to feel that I should have endured, should have waited, should have tolerated or put up with or whatever but its easier now, two months out (two months out!) to say that it was absolutely the right choice for both of us. Still, others seem to have a much bigger problem with what I’m doing now than what I did then.

Two months ago, I told Mike that, in keeping with his offer to move out on September 9th if he wasn’t working, he needed to pack his things and go. I wasn’t ending things, I wasn’t cutting him out of my life. I cut him out of my bank account. It was, to say the least, a surgical removal and it was a bit like taking a 90 pound tumor out of the abdomen of the rest of our relationship – suddenly, everybody can breathe a little bit easier. Things aren’t perfect, we’re not all there yet. I still rely on him more than I would like to and he still has a lot to work out. We still haven’t had any of the big talks about what we want or where we’re going in the long run and we won’t any time soon but I think that’s probably a good thing. We both need some time to figure out what the relationship looks like today, and what we each look like as individuals, before that conversation can be had but we are negotiating other things (some of which would be totally inappropriate to talk about here ) like holidays and birthdays.

For years, Mike’s approach to birthdays has been very much ‘not.’ He spent eight years trying to convince me he hated his birthday and hated people doing things for it until one year I gave him what I asked for and, other than a kiss on the cheek, I didn’t acknowledge it. I think, and I could be wrong, that the reason he has never liked birthdays is because his birthday has never really been about what he likes before. He doesn’t like his mother’s favorite whipped cream frosting because he’s lactose intolerant. He doesn’t want to go out for a big dinner because large meals irritate his stomach. He’s (and he’ll admit this) sometimes a bit of a closed minded mother fucker His anxiety can often get the best of him so new things are often scary and overwhelming. I get all of those things. Not for the same reasons, necessarily, but still.

A few weeks ago, he changed his tune a bit and said that, going forward, he wants to invest a little bit more time and effort into holidays and events, like Christmas and birthdays – make them a little bit less about rushing around doing things for everyone else and make sure we spend a little bit of time making things nice for each other. I was (the girl who who has such events as “talk like a pirate day” and “pi day” marked on her calendar for celebration) understandably all about it. The thing that neither of us likes about holidays isn’t the holiday, it’s celebrating them with people who don’t really get us. So, as his birthday approached and his financial situation is still a little bit tenuous, his anxiety is a little bit amped up and things are feeling pretty tough, I did something the opposite of scary and high maintenance.

I built a fort.

I built a fort from sheets and Christmas lights and yarn and pillows and a giant teddy bear and every blanket I own smack in the middle of my living room. I picked out a couple of movies from netflix (we settled on the Blues Brothers) and I made us a little feast – soft pretzel bites, sour patch kids, gold fish crackers, cinnamon raisin bread, life cereal and his favorite kind of Mountain Dew. I attacked him with a nerf gun the minute he opened the door. We went to dinner across the street and spent the rest of the night hanging out in the fort. That was his birthday.

I hope he liked it. I hope he got it. I hope that he realizes what I know to be true – that everything is what you make of it. Birthdays, Christmas, Tuesdays, whatever – they are exactly what you want them to be if you make them that way. Traditions are wonderful things to have but just because they aren’t exactly normative (see: Christmas stocking full of sex toys, my annual favorite) doesn’t mean they aren’t still traditions.

I still have to pick my TV show and my cocktail for Thanksgiving this year (my own, slightly more macabre, tradition) but, once I’ve done that, I’m going to get down to the messy business of trying to find some new, fun traditions for Christmas. I’ve wanted to remake the holiday experience for myself for a long time and there’s a lot that I’ve been able to do on my own, but having a willing partner in crime is key, and I’m really looking forward to it.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve come to live my life by a single saying.  I no longer feel compelled to remind myself to experience the little things for the gems that they are or to take a deep breath and make change.  Instead, the single mantra that runs behind every decision I make is this:  Never let an opportunity to become a more interesting person pass you by.

That is the mantra that took me to DC last February for one of the best vacation’s I’ve ever been on.  It has brought me through more than a few personal difficulties and it has brought me to some fairly huge personal victories.  It took me to horrible, hot, dirty, amazing Bonnaroo this summer.  It’s the reason I’ve added another memento to my Kennedy collection.  It’s what put Jay on a plane at 4 AM to Chicago on a moments notice.  It’s made me friends and helped me to fix so very very very many things.  It’s paid countless dividends.

It’s also the thing that got me into NaNoWriMo this year, for which I wrote approximately 1700 words and promptly realized two things:  1.  It was easy.  2.  I didn’t want to do it anymore.  It’s not that I’m a masochist, it’s just that NaNoWriMo, for me, is about proving something and I didn’t have anything to prove this year.  I’ve won before, I’ve won easier.  This year, there was no gimmick and I got immediately bored, banged out 1700 words I had zero attachment to and had zero interest in any of them, so I’ve decided to opt out.  It took me a couple of days to admit that decision, but I made it almost immediately.  Maybe next year, or maybe June or maybe never – who knows.  I do know that attempting it reminded me that I need to write more often.  I know that it (and an election cycle, a bad economy, a little bit of pixie dust, a red state and a hankering for change) have made me keenly aware that, while that Coyote Ugly bar dance the Las Vegas news picked up probably destroyed my chances of running for office, you’ll probably find me dialing for Obama, despite my significant reservations about him and banging on doors during the Walker recall this April because it may not be everything but this is a State deeply in need of something better.

In any case, last night I got to pick up the silver lining of abandoning NaNoWriMo – my copy of the first book I’ve paid cover price for since Villa Incognito came out – Chris Matthews Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero.  Internet, I actually preordered that shit and paid for shipping.  It was almost 1 AM when I grabbed it and I only made it to page fifteen before I couldn’t stay awake anymore but, by then, I wanted to fight it in a way I haven’t for a long while – and that was only the Preface.  Chris Matthews loves Jack Kennedy like I love Bobby.  It’s a respect and admiration bordering on reverence.  It’s not the gimmick of wealth and power and beauty, it’s a veneration of the subtly sharp mind behind one of the most difficult political periods of a century and the unflinching dedication to hope in all things.

My admiration of the Kennedy family started, as I think all do, with Jack.  I was a kid learning about American Presidents and Jack, taught a school dedicated to social justice, the humanities and the sciences, is taught exactly as you would imagine – with tremendous love but for me, things quickly took a different course.  Jack, for me, was never half the man that Bobby was.  All of that Kennedy charisma and charm, with a good deal more conviction, thoughtful consideration and care.  Still, as I sit curled up in this chair, glancing up periodically at the art scattered around the room – the Clyde Keller photo of Bobby’s ’68 campaign, the bookshelf covered in Hillary for President and “I Voted Today” stickers, the autographed photos of RFKJ – I’m feeling just a little bit less alone in the world to know that there’s someone else out there who “gets” that Jack, Bobby and Teddy gave their lives – each of them, short or long, despite their various scandals – for a singular cause, each of them picking up the work after the other was felled for hope, for justice, for the dream of what this country and its people had the capacity to become.

I’m not sure if I’ll glean anything else from this book – learn any fact that I didn’t already know or hear some new story about Jack but I’m certain that, if only for that realization, it was totally worth the buy.