How Lucky

To no one in particular, I hope October is proving gentle on your heart.

I haven’t written in a while.

I haven’t been called to write in a while, which I’m learning, is alright.

I have let myself, in other ways, steep into the world around me, make room for some seasonal melancholy, waking up to darkness in a body that can hibernate on a dime, so it takes at least five deep breaths to rise and search for sun, to take stock of what reminds me where I am standing, and how lucky I am to be, at all.

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How lucky am I to have a heart on my arm, inked just above my elbow, traced from a drawing where my heart’s in my stomach, and my hair is thick with pencil lines. There’s a circle around this heart, not quite a ribcage, more like a radiance, or sunlight, something more expansive, and not so much protective. I like that image of my heart, made by tiny hands, that it could be open. Open-hearted.

And then a new friend, in her 17 months of whimsy and wonderment, saw that second heart upon my skin, and exclaimed “heart!” before going “boom, boom,” a fist held tight against her own small chest. My heart squeezed, a joyful pinch, a reminder of how lucky I am for all the many uses for a heart.

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When I was younger, a doctor noticed an extra beating, a misplaced whoosh at the end of a rhythm, and ordered an echocardiogram. We made the long trek into Central Square, decidedly longer in my impatient teenage years.

There was a cold blue gel spread across my chest, and when I finally looked away from the big screen debut of my myocardium, I noticed that her face was stained with silent, tracking tears. I remember flushing, the doctor performing the echo in the first place being notably attractive, and there, my mom was crying.

Now I love that memory.

That your daughter’s beating heart could move you to tears, even in greyscale.

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To no one in particular, I hope October is proving gentle on your heart.