hagar's lesson: feed the chickadees

If you should happen to lose your boyfriend, look to the chickadees and squirrels, and to your lesbian friends, for comfort. I learned that from Hagar, who has been vociferously grieving the loss of her love all about the newsroom of late. We knew too much about the joy and pleasure he gave her, uninvited mental polaroids burned forever into our collective consciousness. (The toys! Why do I know about the toys?) Now we know much about the sorrow.

The depression phase of the breakup hit her, she said, like a ton of bricks on Saturday morning. Luckily for our heartsick heroine, nature and friends were a soothing balm on the lacerations of middle-aged loneliness. At Pike Lake, she found sweet relief. Now there's a new picture in my head, one I don't mind so much. It's the one that matches this statement:

"If you hold out a handful of seeds, and are very patient and still, a chickadee will come and land there - right in the palm of your hand! But before it eats anything it will look up, right into your eyes, as if to say Thankyou for honouring my trust. Thankyou for feeding me."