I am still devastated. And I am still numb.
I was told this Thursday, August 4, a couple days after I learned that Mother was working for a competing company. I was told to come in and help deliver something to somewhere.
When I came in it was empty, totally quiet. I stumble in and look to my left, where I see My Father sitting in repose on a chair in total darkness. I hate it when he gets all weird and dark and shit like that.
"What's going on?" I ask, making sure I don't take any shit from him. These are the times he likes to insult me. Instead, he decks me with bad news.
"OK," My Father says, and then words that have changed my life forever: "We are closing the store. It'll take a couple months, but we will close. I'm older than 65 years now, right? Uncle can't work anymore because of his heart. It's been 35 years, we stop now."
I had my hands on my hips, girding myself for what bullshit was going to come out of his mouth. Instead, I froze where I stood. And I could stammer out was an, "Oh."
In his juvenile, stupid way of breaking the ice, he then asks me: "So, do you want to exercise?"
"Huh?"
"If you want, you help me move the rice to the warehouse."
I didn't have time; I was going to a dental appointment after dropping the stuff off. But his "joke" gave me a way of going off on him: "No, I can't! I have to go to the dentist!!" And I left.
I was in a daze when I had my teeth cleaned. I wish they knocked me out.
That's why I've been helping him out at the store. We are moving things that the company that Mother now works for has agreed to take off our hands. My parents will then sell the warehouse. Afterwards, they are going to do all they can to empty the store, then sell the building, possibly to the milk factory across the parking lot from us. Their business is growing, and they've been looking to expand for a long time. I guess my parents decided this was that time.
Every trip to the store is now fraught with fear and personal anguish. What's going to be missing this time around? How is the store going to look different now? And when is it finally going to be shut down for good? My folks don't tell us shit like that. Fuck, I don't even think my brother and sister know, although they should have known when My Fucking Father told me.
I grew up hating the store. It was grimy. My parents worked at a place no other kids' parents worked at. It was in a dangerous part of the city, especially when I was young. Many things were stolen from us, including some guy who wouldn't return the hat I let him look at (Mother tried to get it back, then started yelling at me for giving him my hat -- wow, I just acted out upon remembering that, I don't think I've ever completely loved her after that) and so much money out of the register that they moved it from the front door of the store to the middle.
The worst incident was in the summer when I was home. I remember playing on my brother's Sega when my Grandmother came in and said that the store was robbed. Two guys were just walking around the aisles of the store, and when the customers all left, they whipped out their guns, told my parents and brother to get down on the floor, and took all the money. My folks were never the same after that.
They took my brother and I to the store to work on Saturdays for a good, oh, six or seven years, and working there was our summer job up to our teens. We despised that. I mean, other kids were out having fun, and we're stuck working for you guys? But about halfway through I started realizing two things. First of all, I began to understand the concept of work. It didn't instill in me a work ethic (I'm still lazy). But it opened my eyes to what my future held, and what it would take to get by in the world. And, paradoxically, it didn't make me feel confident about finding a job when I grew up. It made me fearful. I now understood that any business, especially one of your own, takes a fucking lot of work. And I knew, even as a kid, I didn't have what it took. I'm pretty sure that wasn't a lesson my parents wanted to teach me.
But about that last thing, understanding you have to work. It ties into the other thing I learned while doing time at the store on Saturdays: It taught me how important the store was to the family. My parents ran a theater for a short while before they had to close it, and they ran a restaurant for a little while before they had to close that. That meant that the store was the only thing providing income for this family. All my life I knew that my parents were working at the store. I don't remember a day without the store. But that's gone now. Shit, it's possible that the store is already closed and I don't even know it.
I want to be wrapped up in an identity. I want to be a part of something that's meaningful to me. The best kind of work is work I can be passionate about; then, as the bromide goes, you don't have to work a day in your life. But I need some permanence, too. I love my alma mater because I know that, through thick and thin, good times and shitty, it's going to be there. USC is going to outlive me, but that's OK, because as an institution it was here before me and it'll be here when I'm gone.
I thought the same way about the store. The family was the store. And growing up I went from being ashamed of it to being proud. OK, I did very little in running the store, and I don't think I could have taken over the family business, and I really doubt they would have let me if I tried. But our identity -- or at least mine -- was integrated to this little grocery store and food delivery business. It was fucking hard work, but all of the spoils my parents earned and gave to the family. Like I said, they were their own bosses, and that sense of independence is something they instilled in me. I don't think I'm succeeding, but I learned from them the principal freedom in being your own boss. Maybe that's why I tolerate being a temp.
I realized something today: If, Buddha willing, I live a long life, I will look back on the store, and its closing, as merely a footnote, something that shaped only the first half of my life. I never thought of that way, and honestly, I'm still not prepared for that new way of thinking. Maybe it was because I grew up assuming the fundamental presence of the store, but I thought it was going to be around forever, in some fashion. In the big picture, maybe it isn't supposed to be this way. But right now, knowing how the store sustained this family and pushed three kids through college, it feels like it should be honored in a better way than to be slowly forgotten over the decades.
I could look on the bright side. Unlike the theater and restaurant, it looks like this was a decision to end the store's life. I have not and will not ask, but I think it could've continued operating. They just didn't want to anymore (or at least Father; I still don't quite understand the thinking behind it, although he told me they decided right around the time we went to see my sister get "married again). My folks have earned the right to call it quits. And hey, a family-run business for 35 years is a hell of an accomplishment.
But yet I still feel like this is a fatal blow to me personally. Not only does this change the dynamic at home (Father's retired now, which means he'll be -- gulp -- home more often), but this new phase in their lives spurs me, possibly to a new phase in mine. I don't like to change, but I do so oftentimes as a reaction to other things. I rarely change on my own. It's a result of other things being different, other things letting me down. This looks like one of those times, and yet I am scared. Scared of what's to come, scared of the decisions I'll have to make, scared of the mistakes I will make as a result, and, most importantly, scared that the living, breathing old lady on the North Side of Minneapolis no longer exists, not only as a brick-and-mortar store but as an essential part of this family's legacy.
Change sucks.
---
My Father was inordinately happy today. He called me in early because he needed me to grab something at a competitor's warehouse. He turned on the lights but kept the front door locked; seriously, is the store closed now? But he was grinning as he gave me the credit slip and check to buy the things. He was alone and presumably moving things around in the back, but he was happy as a clam.
Moreover, tonight my parents beat me home. I was out buying some water and the cheapest price in town. I needed a break (didn't help Father out at the store today -- it's $6 movie day at the local Regal) and wanted to work on my laptop over coffee, and then this hellacious storm hit the area. I decided to try and wait it out.
At a bit past 6:30 I called home. Grandmother answered, then handed off the phone to My Father. But instead of being angry, he told me, "Take your time." Take my time?? He's never been this cheerful when I was late getting home.
I couldn't wait any longer. It was pouring buckets at 7, but I had to brave the rain, so I left. I got a fucking lot more wet than I thought I would. And when I came home, my parents had already eaten. Like it wasn't a big deal that I hadn't come home yet.
And that's another thing that scares me about The Death Of The Store: Their newfound levity is something I'm not used to. And I don't like it because it's ... different.
Oh, and one more thing: My Father's good nature feels like the behavior of someone just before he commits suicide. They say that a tell-tale sign of a person who has decided to kill himself is to act as happy as possible and to give away things. There is no more conflict within the person, and he knows that he will not have any more use of the material things he owns.
Just a thought, although a paranoid one.
---
I am taking a vacation starting this afternoon and lasting till Saturday night. I actually made all the plans just before this bomb was dropped on me, but now I think I need this trip to St. Louis because I need to get away and clear my head. Don't know what good it'll do me; I'll still have to come back to this shit.
So I may or may not be blogging Thursday and Friday. I might, if I just have to check my e-mail and facebook. I do know that the Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey will take a rest for the week. Geez, why can't the store take a rest for the week too. ...
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