What she said.

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You despair and you rage, and you are not alone.

All of us in this corner have suffered the same loss of different stripes, different circumstances, all of us wandering this earth with holes blown through our souls.

We can look you in the eye and accept your rage and receive it, relate to it, even just be in the same room with it.

You are both a victim and a masochist. You never want to leave the house again. You imagine a pulse like in apocalyptic movies that sweeps over populations of picturebook mommies and daddies, rendering them limp like rag dolls, not hurt but hit by an explosive wave of acknowledgement that forces them despite their whole, healthy children to pause for a moment, to be touched by this blackness.

It'll feel that way for a while.

Then one day the hole will have a layer of cheesecloth stretched over it, diffusing the howling wind. Then two layers, then three. Holes will be ripped through it when you least expect. Other days you'll not even feel a draft, like it’s been blocked up for good with mortar and brick, and you’ll resent that protection for how it buffers you from the rawness, from all you know of your son or daughter.

Your heart will figure out how to hold on and let go at the same time.

Write if you can, or make art, or be alone, whatever you need. Don’t apologize for a single thing.

And feel us out here, sisters standing beside you.

Wherever we go, we are preceded by Evan’s self-made celebrity status.

We step over the threshold of our beloved café and before we’ve shaken the snow off our boots Evan calls out, “HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!” and trots off to survey the treats behind the glass, marvelling at the CHERRY EXPWOSION BAR! and the WOCKY WOAD BWOWNIE!, asking and repeating the name of each as though it’s the most unbelievable thing he will ever see in his whole entire life.

As he weaves through the tables patrons smile broadly, and he stops to tell them all of circus trains and breakdown trains and cranky trains and twubblesome twucks, counting fingers waggling in mid-air, Sir Evan Toppem Hat himself status reporting for the benefit of everyone in a hundred-foot radius.

“Oooooo, MOMMY! Looooook! Beautiful dewicious! Oooo, dat’s my most favourite, ya, dat right dere,” as he points earnestly at a double chocolate cookie the size of his own head. He scurries around to the kitchen door and pipes out, “Hey nice lady, can I have a cookie, pweeze? A-dis one, right dere, pweeze. Yup.”

On the way home Justin says do you think he’s a bit over the top? I mean, I know WE think he’s cute when he tugs on some random person’s sleeve and they attempt evasive action but fail and get dragged away against their will to the Island of Sodor, but do you think he’s… just like some toddler energy vacuum in the room wherever he goes, and do you think that grates on people?

He’s ours, and of course he makes us smile, and our emotional investment in him amplifies our seeing of the smiles of others and all but smothers our registering of anything less. So is it all just our bias, our perception of his curb appeal?

Doesn’t matter.

We want the world to see in our children what we celebrate as sassy, or determined, or relentlessly engaging. But in truth, we’re too busy giggling amongst ourselves, all like heh, there he goes, our little Juggernaut, to really notice.

++++++

Today, Evan turns three years old and Ben, eight months old.

As Evan leaps circles through the house squealing “3-2-1 BLASTOFF!” Ben is agog. Seeing it turns my heart to mush, two brothers slipping into big and baby roles. Evan thinks Ben is hysterical. Ben thinks Evan is a superhero.

And I think what they say about the capacity of hearts is true, that the mathematical effect of procreation is measured not with division but with multiplication.

There’s a reason they call it retail therapy. It feels good.

Feels good in the same way that a 4 AM streetside donair helps to ward off the spins when you’re 23 and drunk and crave greasy, garlicky, mystery meatiness, ten minutes after which you burp, grimace and think to yourself now THAT’S not going to sit well.

No one was ever allowed to eat one of those bad boys inside the car so I’d hang my head and one donair-gripping arm out the window like a dog, dribbling a wind-blown stream of King of Donair juice down the entire broadside of someone’s mother’s sedan.

Then regret, always regret, accompanied by intestinal distress and four straight days of incurable kitten breath.

The retail equivalent of the 4 AM streetside donair can be found at Winners (and its American counterpart TJ Maxx and the like) and other big boxes like Wal-Mart, the ultimate man-behind-the-curtain of the western world, the fat controller with its own gross domestic product and restless proletariat.

$29.99 gets you everything from small appliances with expiry dates to more godforsaken plastic for the kiddies to a Whole New You, and you may as well, because it’s only $29.99, right? And it gives you a rush, the thrill of a successful hunt. Fruitful wandering, meditative value in shuffling through aisles upon aisles of stuff you don’t need, feeling swishy and indulgent, driving away with that rustlingly pleasant sensation of superfluous loot in the trunk of the car.

This is how you end up owning not two but ten of everything: dish sets and teapots and identical jeans and vanilla explosion bath bombs. Material wealth — stuff sucked in and pushed out of our homes in a transient, tidal flow — accessorizes our disposable, replaceable, gizmo-laden life.

Have you ever cut up a credit card? Not from self-censoring but after years of dogged overpayments and scrimping, because it’s finally down to zero? That’s a good feeling that lasts, leaves you feeling free and purposeful and healthy and downright clever.

I don’t want to live on borrowed funds, on money that hasn’t been earned, on credit that stinks like a bad fish for years after purchases have long since gone to goodwill. That’s the good intention. Sometimes followed, sometimes not. But now, at least, I’ve got a second source of Antistuffitude beyond the immediate personal and financial.

The fortitude that lingered after watching this is as close to a new years’ resolution that I’ll get. Take twenty minutes and do it now.

Fuel, inspiration, a match.

Update: it would seem the Story of Stuff site has its own brand of indigestion... not surprising. This viral kick-in-the-butt has likely been swamped with traffic.

Here's an alternative. Not nearly as elegant, but the whole thing is now on YouTube, chapter-by-chapter. Click here to start at the beginning.