Happy Phil McKinney Appreciation Day

Happy early Valentine’s Day and Happy Galentine’s Day! In the past couple of days, I’ve had a couple of people tell me that they don’t care for Valentine’s Day all that much. Either it bums them out because they are single or they resent the holiday for being invented and perpetuated by the greeting card companies to sell treats.

To that, I offer an alternative. On February 14, instead of celebrating Valentine’s Day, I urge you to celebrate Phil McKinney Appreciation Day. Phil McKinney is my dad. His birthday is February 14. He died in September 2017, but that is not the most relevant part of him. The most relevant part of him is that he never, ever let a person get away from him without them knowing exactly how much he appreciated them. He never, ever spent a day without making someone smile.

For me, he told me how much he loved me and how much he appreciated me all the time. Getting off the phone was at least a 15 minute dance. We’d say, “I love you” then talk about something else for a few minutes. Then we’d say, “I love you” again, then talk about another thing - so the cycle continued.

I would get calls and voicemails from him telling me he was just thinking about me and wanted to say hello. It wasn’t even important that I answered. Sometimes I’m glad I missed the calls because now I have a collection of recordings of him telling me how proud he was of me and just how much he loved me.

For strangers, he walked away from interactions after making them laugh or making a genuine connection with them. I will never forget how he made the person at the State Fair of Texas, whose job it was to sell storm windows, crack up with a quick bit. He stood between the storm windows, and when the heat lamp activated - the one meant to show how thick the storm windows were - Daddy shook back and forth like he was being electrocuted. After a beat, the guy tasked with selling the windows bent over laughing.

He remained genuinely curious and never stopped learning. Once he got access to the internet, he perused articles on whatever topic struck his curiosity.

“I read the whole Wikipedia article about sharks,” he once told me.

With each technological innovation, he was awestruck and grateful. When we would FaceTime, he would marvel at the ingenuity.

“This is just like Star Trek.”

So all this weekend through Monday, if you feel like you’re alone or like you hate Valentine’s Day, that’s ok. It’s not just Valentine’s Day. The real holiday - the one I celebrate instead - is Phil McKinney Appreciation Day.

If other people celebrate Valentine’s Day with red, heart-shaped candy boxes and bouquets of flowers, I challenge you to celebrate Phil McKinney Appreciation Day how Phil McKinney lived —

Tell everyone you love that you love them. Tell everyone that you’re proud of that you’re proud of them. Make someone laugh. It can be a quick joke to a grocery store clerk, a fun inside joke shared with your co-worker, a silly game with your partner or your kid. Doesn’t matter - it just needs to be joyful, funny, and done with generosity. Remain curious and eager to learn. Read a whole Wikipedia article on a topic you’ve always wondered about. Take a second to be grateful for the tiny super computer you carry with you in your pocket each day.

Additionally, in honor of this weekend’s great holiday, I offer you the piece below I wrote not so long after he left this earthy realm. It’s called “Counting the Days It Rains.” It has to do with missing him and football and celebrating him in tiny ways, all of which seem relevant given that it’s both Super Bowl Weekend and also his birthday.

So this week, I bid you a Happy Phil McKinney Appreciation Day. I love you. I am proud of you. I hope you make somebody - even just one single person - smile however you can. And go learn something new about sharks.

xoxo,

heather

***

Counting the Days It Rains

You can never miss someone all at once. Maybe that's better so we don't die of broken hearts. I miss my dad in subtle, simple ways that come on suddenly and rush around me like a north wind and hit me in my bones.

I miss him with something simple like the smell of gasoline on my hands after filling my car up. When I was a kid, I'd take any chance I could get to go with him anywhere – to the gas station, to the auto store. Rubber car floor mats and 10W40 oil and gasoline smells remind me of being waist-high in an auto parts store, overwhelmed by the aisles of foreign objects, containers of fluids, and car tires. The pressure gauges were my favorite. I loved sliding the plastic indicator in and out like a slide whistle.

Fall weather and rain remind me of him. He kept a huge calendar on the cork board in the kitchen where he tracked when it rained. He would write “RAINED TODAY” in the little white squares on the month's page. “RAN SPRINKLERS” on others, to track the amount of moisture on the grass.

Football season makes me miss him. Although, I believe when we truly love someone, any word can be related to them in a linked chain of thoughts. In improv, they call it A-to-C thinking – “A makes me think of B, which makes me think of C.” It is supposed to help you get to a more creative idea. But when we miss someone, it’s a cruel trick that lets your brain jump from garage door to dad. Some memories are a direct route, though. Football is one of those.

At the State Fair of Texas

Daddy would watch any football game, old or new, but he particularly loved the Dallas Cowboys. He and I would talk about games on the phone the day after they happened. I should rephrase that so as not to overstate my football knowledge. He would talk; I would listen. He omitted any jargon and told me about plays in plain terms. I did the same with the law. He was interested in the legal system, always desperately wanting to be chosen for a jury. Complex cases fascinated him. I loved explaining legal issues of procedure or jurisdiction to him. Much like my explanations didn't make him a lawyer, his explanations never made me a football expert.

He particularly loved cold fronts and weather changes, even when they blew leaves into the garage. So when I woke up this morning and a cold front had blown through, it made me miss him again. To help with that, I turned on a Dallas Cowboys podcast. I had no clue what I was hearing. Maybe the more I listen, the more I'll learn. Maybe I need to make flashcards.

Cars are another thing that make me think of him. When I left work on my first day back from bereavement leave, I scraped my car on a pole. My first instinct was to grab my phone and call him. But I couldn't. So instead, I called mom, then my brother-in-law. But those calls didn't help, so I wept the whole drive home.

In the garage, I pulled myself together and reminded myself that my parents didn't raise a helpless damsel in distress. They raised me. So I mashed the Google button on my phone and said desperately into the microphone, “I scratched my car. What do I do?”

The pleasant AI voice reading from the first page of search results said, “Most scratches can be removed with whitening toothpaste.” I grabbed a roll of paper towels and some Windex to clean the spot. The scratch was huge. My car had basically hugged a concrete pillar as big around as a tree trunk. I went inside and brought back a tube of Crest Whitening with Scope + Cavity Protection. I was not sure whether the cavity protection would help, but I thought for sure it couldn't hurt.

Using a soft cloth, I went to work. There, on the concrete floor of the garage, in my dress pants and blouse and leather work shoes, I slathered my car in toothpaste. With both hands, I rubbed in vigorous circles over and over. The white streaks on my car’s blue paint started to fade. The scratches lightened then disappeared. Little by little, the door panel returned to its smooth surface. It smelled minty fresh and would no longer be susceptible to cavities, tartar, or plaque.

The heat from the engine and the humidity from the open garage door had sweat pouring down my face and back. But I worked through it, determined not to be incapacitated by my grief. I couldn't bring my dad back by rubbing toothpaste into my car door, but I could ensure he did his job before leaving. He and my mom raised a woman capable of helping herself with a little muscle and sweat, a Google search and the last half of a tube of Crest.

That's how I'll remember him. With every problem I fix myself, every cold front blowing through, every football game and Valentine’s Day, and by counting the days that it rains.

***

This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.

Miles and Miles

This weekend, I had the pleasure of performing a story live at The Comedy Arena. If you happened to miss the event, no worries. The text of what I performed (for the most part) is below. Some of it was improvised in the moment because that’s just how my brain works. I didn’t record the performance, either, so I can’t remember what I improvised. It wasn’t much, but that’s the nature of live performances. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

Miles and Miles

I am a sucker for targeted advertisements. It’s something I know about myself and actively hate, but that I still can’t change. So when the Internet recently got wind that I was planning a camping trip to Big Sur in California, it took that as a checkered flag to immediately start trying to sell me stuff.

Targeted ads are like going shopping with a really excited but scatterbrained friend. It just starts listing stuff you may need.

Do you need a flashlight? For sure. What about a lantern? Absolutely. What about a head lantern? Did not know there is a difference, but sure, throw that one in there, too.

When the internet tried selling me a rain jacket, I was hesitant. Don’t get me wrong. It was a real nice jacket: nylon, bright teal, made by The North Face. I know that’s a fancy brand, but I don’t know what “The North Face” means. I figure it must be the scariest side of a mountain. I doubt you would you name your clothing company after the easiest part of a mountain. If you did, I would buy that jacket.

Nice as it was, I still hesitated because I already have a rain jacket. It’s hanging in my garage along with several jackets from the same collection. It’s been in the family for a long time, probably so long that at this point, you can call it an heirloom. There’s even a photograph of me at about eight years old, wearing this jacket, jumping on the trampoline in our backyard wearing a pair of shoes. Parenting in the ‘90s was off the wall. At the time, the jacket was huge on me. it came down to my knees and the hood covered my eyes like a druid robe.

Now, as a grown-up, it fits me like it should. It has all the features of The North Face jacket as well - mesh lining, hood with draw strings, pockets that zip.

Still, I can’t bring myself to wear it because of the tag on its chest. I think from far away most people wouldn’t recognize it, but up close, there’s no denying that red logo. Beneath the red in black text, it reads Marlboro Adventure Club.

Although I was too young to officially join as a member, I remember the Marlboro Adventure Club well. It hit its stride in the mid-to-late 1990s. Its membership hinged entirely on smoking cigarettes then redeeming the “miles” from each pack for prizes, courtesy of the fine folks at Phillip Morris. I didn’t keep any of my Adventure Club magazines from back then, but I scoped out eBay to see if I could get a copy. That’s where I learned there is whole section of the internet where people collect “Tobacciana” – memorabilia built around smoking. It’s like when you go into a person’s kitchen and they have way too much Coca Cola stuff all over the walls except with cigarettes. 

The Tobaccianists came through for me. A few clicks on eBay, and for $4.99 plus shipping, I am now the proud owner of a 1997 edition of the Marlboro Adventure Club catalog.

If it weren’t for the surgeon general’s warning at the bottom of each spread, I would have though they mistakenly sent me an REI catalog. The first page shows the muscled arms and legs of a hiker conquering a near-inverse crag, with the text posing a challenge to readers: “It’s hot, rugged, and rough – take on the summer!” Both of the model’s hands are gripped on the rocks, so I could see there was no cigarette between his fingers, but the photo strategically cropped out his head. In theory, he could have been sucking on a 100 out of frame to give himself that push to go just a little higher.

A few pages over, a kayaker splashes through rough waters. Both hands are on the oar, his face is also cropped out. Maybe he had a menthol tucked behind his ear, ready to light up when he hit shore. The page declares: “You’re gonna get wet,” which read like a threat. Or I suppose a promise. It continued: “Take on the rivers!” 

Again, this magazine was not produced by an energy drink company or protein powder manufacturer. When you see an ad for Gatorade that says, “Take on the summer” – your subconscious finishes the sentence with – “By drinking Gatorade.” Likewise, if you see “You’re gonna get wet” in an Under Armour Ad, you may think “But not with an Under Armour moisture wicking sports bra.”

But this was the Marlboro Adventure Club. It didn’t play by society’s rules. Over a photograph of a person riding a bicycle – again with both hands visible but their face out of frame, the Club boasts: “If it’s wide enough for 2 wheels, it’s a trail. Take on the trail!” I guess that means public sidewalks? It’s a trail. Moving sidewalk in the airport? It’s a trail. Escalators at a mall? It’s a trail!

There is a lot of fighting language in these pages. If I didn’t know any better, I would think cigarettes were laced with something that makes you want to fight nature. You suck down a few packs and you’ll want to punch a tree in the face or kick a babbling brook. 

I have never smoked cigarettes, so I have never been jacked up enough to fight a bush, but I did get a LOT of merch from this catalog.

Each item has a price listed beside it in “miles.” Much like other companies who want you to spend money without doing math, Marlboro converted each pack of cigarettes to 5 miles and priced each item in the catalog in miles.

Rain jacket - the same one I have hanging. In my garage - 995 Miles.

Big Sky Bed – which is just an air mattress in Marlboro red - 1,650 Miles.

All leather hiking boots, probably used to kick a cloud - 2,100 Miles

Let me spare you the mental math – the boots cost 420 packs of cigarettes. The air mattress – 330. The rain jacket - 199.

Like I said, we got a lot of merch from this place – jean jacket, leather jacket, rain jacket, fleece jacket, beach towel, duffle bag, camping tent, full size acoustic guitar, and a 420x zoom Bushnell deep space telescope that I still have in my house to this day.

Even though I kept the telescope, this catalog is the real gem. Those mountains. Those biking trails. Those white waters that the models navigated with ease. But then seeing the prices of each outdoorsy item reminds me of what my dad had to navigate to get us there. His adventures weren’t as frivolous as over-packing for a trip to Big Sur. Or even a scary like fighting nature. It was the mortgage. Us kids. The jobs he didn’t particularly like that he still had to go to anyway. That’s what he navigated.

Since it was a collectors item, at least according to eBay, I left the Adventure Club jacket at home for our trip. As I added that North Face raincoat to my cart, I thought about all the things they try to sell us and how easily we buy them.

***

That’s my performance piece! I thought it would be fun for you all to see/read how I write when I know it’s going to be performed out loud. I originally had a lot more stuff I wrote in an earlier draft about smoking and losing my dad, but I purposely left that out because an improv troupe performed a set in their show basedon what I said and I’m not a monster. I also tend to improvise while I am performing, so the next time I perform this, it’ll be different. In that sense, it’s still technically a draft.

.***

This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.

Lost and Found

It’s that time of year again. September 14, 2017 is the day my dad died. The days up until that day are harder than other days in the year. It’s also kind of weird timing this year because Christie and I are headed off to start our tour ON September 14. I’ll be on a plane, headed to Tacoma, Washington to perform a live comedy show the next day. I know I’ll be ok. Performing is what saves me when I feel like I’ve lost control of the world. Still, of all the days, right?

This week I’m bringing you a piece I wrote in 2017 just a few days after he was gone. I then published a version in my essay collection last year. If you’ve read it before, feel free to skip it. You won’t hurt my feelings, though I have made some tweaks, additions, and changes to the version below. I’ll be back with something new for you next week.

xo

****

Lost and Found

When my dad died and we started to receive such a lovely outpouring of support, I told a friend that the phrase, “Sorry for your loss” struck me as odd. I mean, I have said it to plenty of people who have lost loved ones (See? Even I said it. Lost loved ones.) But putting it in context of my dad dying, it sat awkwardly in my ears.

It didn't seem hollow because I know the people who were saying it truly meant it, just as I had meant it every time I said it to someone else. It was something about the word “loss” and “lost” that got me. He isn't lost. I have lost a lot of things in my life. In fact, losing things was a defining feature of my relationship with my father as I was growing up. But I don't know if I feel like I lost him.

My dad always fixed his hair the same way. The earliest photo I have of the patented Phil McKinney hairstyle is from 1967 and is, luckily, in color. It features my father, James-Dean-cool, in a peach button down shirt, wide collar framing his tan face topped with the 'do. A pompadour stacked high on his head like soft serve in a cone.

To achieve this hairstyle, he would shower then dry his hair carefully with the hairdryer on the lowest setting both for power and heat. Next he used a thick-toothed comb with a long handle to achieve the shape. He finished it off with some ozone-depleting White Rain hairspray straight from the can he kept on top of his dresser.

As a child, I found that his thick-toothed comb was the perfect tool to comb through my thick hair. When my parents could convince me to bathe, I would screech and scream if anyone tried combing my wet hair afterward. Instead, I would sneak in the master bathroom where my Dad kept his blue comb on the back of the toilet tank and take it. Without fail, it would end up inside a toy box, in a closet, somehow in the car, the backyard, the neighbor's pool. Anywhere except where it belonged.

Plenty of times growing up, I heard "Where's my comb?" The answer always was wherever the last place I had left it. The tricky part was remembering where that place was.

I knew losing things was an inextricable part of my personality when, two Christmases ago, I received not one but two Bluetooth key-trackers as gifts. I am nothing more than a taller version of that chubby little kid with a dark blonde bob being lectured by Dad: “If you would put it back where it goes, you would never lose it.”

After his death, when folks were saying “Sorry for your loss,” it never felt right. Because I didn't lose my dad. I lose everything else in my life. But I’ve only ever lost my dad once before.

At the State Fair of Texas each year, he would stop to buy a beer or a sausage-on-a-stick while the rest of the family would keep walking. Usually he would catch up, but sometimes he would wander over to a show or stop to watch a salesman putting on a pitch. My mom called this behavior “Mr. Magoo-ing” because he would wander off like the cartoon character Mr. Magoo and end up in zany situations.

On the Midway, he would always play the Guess Your Weight game, always pulling his pants down below his bellybutton and jutting out his gut. The guesser always overshot his weight, and Dad would carry away a toy for us, triumphant. He also couldn't resist the pool table games, and eventually, om would have to drag him away from the tables and their uneven feet.

One stop on our Fair trips was always the building beside Big Tex with the spas and gutter systems surrounded by the sewing machines and mattresses for sale. One year, the first booth inside was selling storm windows. The signs proclaimed that these windows could block out all the heat from the sun. To demonstrate this, they set up two windows facing each other, with just enough space for a person to stand between. On the outside of the windows were heat lamps. The window on the left was the competition’s, and you could feel the heat burning through the glass. On the other side was the window they were selling, which remained cool to the touch. The lamps would alternate on and off, illuminating red.

Dad stood between the two windows when the lights were off. When they glowed red again, he placed a hand on either window, vibrated his body as if he were being electrocuted. He made a groaning, sputtering sound, buzzing between his lips, zzzz zzz. Two people behind him shrieked, then laughed as they realized what he was doing. Hearing their laughter, he looked over his shoulder, noticing the couple, and smiled. We saw him from across the showroom and laughed. Of course he had wandered off, and of course he was making strangers laugh.

Another year, after we had stopped to buy a Miracle Broom from one of the showrooms, he offered to carry it. The broom had a long yellow handle with three rows of rubber bristles on the end. As the sun got hotter and the crowd got thicker, we somehow lost Daddy in the hustle. He had once again Magooed away from the pack.

Looking over my shoulder through the swamp of people. There in the crowd, over the tops of ball caps and cowboy hats, I saw the long yellow handle and the rubber bristles of our Miracle Broom, sticking up tall, bouncing up and down as he signaled to us like ships on the sea.

So even though I had "lost" him before, I had also been comforted by knowing where he was, even if not exactly where. That day at the fair, we knew he was still at the fair. Mom had the car keys in her purse. Weekdays, I knew he was at work. Around 11AM, he was watching YouTube videos at his desk eating his scrambled egg sandwich or some leftovers from dinner on his lunch break. Between 5PM and 6PM he was driving home in his tiny blue car.

Friday afternoons, he was out with Mom, probably having a very early dinner somewhere, always using a coupon. Friday nights, he would be in the brown recliner, placed just so, in the exact spot in the living room as the two recliners before it, watching old movies or flipping channels because “There is nothing good on TV.” Sometimes late Friday or Saturday nights, he would call, saying, “I’m sorry to bother you, sweetie. I just wanted to hear your voice.” He would talk about the old days, when my sister and I were kids, and tell me how proud he was of me. Sundays he would be watching football.

When people started telling me they were “sorry for my loss,” my initial reaction was, “I haven’t lost him. He is dead. I know where we last left him.”

But now I know that's not entirely true. Because now I realize that, in a way, I have lost him. And it’s worse than any other time before because right now I don't know where he is. I think that's an important part of grief. Someone you loved was here, in the same bubble as you, where you could call them or drive to them or send them a text message, but now they're gone.

Yes, I know there are a million religious and spiritual beliefs that would tell me “where” he is. But in terms of the afterlife, I think of the inability to create or destroy matter. I think maybe when we die, we splinter off into a million tiny pieces of energy. Some of those pieces hang on to the loved ones we leave behind, and those loved ones become stronger as a result.

The truly painful part in the interim is the unknown. Will I feel better tomorrow? In a month? In a year? In ten years? I can tell you those folks I know who have lost a parent seem to me, although completely put together and reasonable to the general public, to love and miss their parent just as much today as when it happened. I know enough about myself to know I'll be the same way.

So I guess now I get what someone means when they say they're sorry for my “loss.” It’s more than my keys. It’s more than the panic I felt as a kid when my mom turned down an aisle unexpectedly and left me untethered standing under fluorescent lights on some dirty grocery store linoleum. It’s that nagging feeling I have had since he died; the feeling that when I get real quiet, I can feel the world is emptier without him.

.***

This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.