Heartbreak in the Aisles

The aisles of Target, that is. Back when things were just a little weird and typically crazy, before they got seriously weird and bad, I posted about my giddy love for the blue bunny Easter plates, and my fondness for trolling for interesting design at Target.

Last night I was back there again (honestly, I only go 2 or 3 times a month), in the children's book section, just randomly looking around. While I didn't feel very moody and touchy when I left the house after dinner, I found myself feeling awfully moody and weepy once I got there. I think it was because I stopped in the card aisle, looking for Father's Day cards for Myk from the kids and me. But of course, I couldn't help but see all the other Father's Day cards, the ones I'd normally be perusing for my own dad. Then there were also all the "Papa" cards, that I won't be buying for the kids to give to their great-grandpa this year, either. And then I felt rather silly, for getting upset at such a rather...obvious situation. I didn't imagine that Father's Day, or at least Father's Day cookie-cutter-sentiment greeting cards, would provoke me, but yet there I was, getting all misty under the fluorescents.

Anyway, later in the trip, after the dipes/wipes/vitamins, etc. had been checked off the list, I was in the children's book aisle, and I casually opened up a hardbound book for older kids, called, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. I didn't read the jacket to see what it was about; instead, my fingers just rifled through it and ended up on the dedication page, where there was this quote from a poem by Stanley Kunitz:

"The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go through the dark and deeper dark
and not to turn."

Yes. Yes. So, this time -- no surprising modern design. Just a bit of truth and poetry, at a big-box retail store on a Tuesday night in the late spring. I don't think Lily, despite her advanced reading, is quite ready for the story of Edward Tulane, yet. Evidently it's about a cold and arrogant toy bunny who finds love after being very lost. All I know is that I'm grateful for the sentiment from Mr. Kunitz ( a late poet of great renown in the literature world), and I hope to be reading more of him -- and more poetry, in general, very soon. Wild emotion, tamed and distilled into perfect words and stanzas, is exactly what is called for, these days.

*Aisle of tall trees, taken in Oregon.