Hearts

I made that Dollar Tree mesh heart wreath this year.  Of course, mine didn’t quite turn out like the YouTube examples, but, still the finished product brought that surge of pleasure and tingle of pride that I had accomplished…well, something.  For me, it’s the process more than the product that proves to be the wonder – always has been.  In measuring, cutting, placing, etc., I fade into a space of iridescent serenity.  My fingers toil, but my mind relaxes into stillness – total, unabashed comfort in creating something with my hands, much the way I feel when I’m kneading bread or knitting. (I can cast on, manage another row or two, then I’ve exhausted my repertoire; unravel the rows and begin again.). 

As I was measuring out the eight-inch lengths of mesh in alternating colors of pink, white, and red, my mind searched the shelves of memory seeking out the volumes detailing impressions of variations of heart themes.  Some of those recollections brought instant and unequivocal smiles of joy, some brought fracases of emotions that I quickly shoved behind me, refusing to untangle the echoes they left because – even years later -I refuse to allow myself to sink into their mire. I flip pages, replace volumes, searching for…what?   Then, at the very edge of the shelves of memory a tiny volume, glimmered with that ethereal childhood wonderment.  Here, I allow my hands to still and close my eyes.

In memory, not quite four years old,  I wore one of my Sunday School dresses though it was Wednesday or Thursday, and I danced at the picture window waiting for my daddy.  I recognized this place, this time: I had been entrusted to the care of my preschool teacher and her family, friends of my parents, while my father had taken my mother to the hospital for the arrival of my baby sister.  Today, my father would introduce my brother and me to the new baby, and it was that anticipation that had sent me to dance at the window.  Finally, Daddy was there, and we were off to the hospital.  

Across the ocean – at least to a toddler’s eyes – of white tiled lobby to the elevators saw my anticipation crescendo.   We rode the elevators up to the newborn nursery. (We’re talking eons before the days of rooming-in.).  Once we stepped through the doors of the maternity ward, the reverential hush of the floor settled over us, and even three-year-old me felt its spell.  

One wall of the corridor was inset with a long window waist height for an adult.  Facing the window was a bulletin board covered with pink paper and edged with that coordinating scalloped paper border familiar from any elementary school classroom.  Stapled in rows across that pink bulletin board were red hearts, the kind children learn to make by folding pieces of construction paper in half and cutting stylized semi-circles.  In the center of each heart was a word written in black block letters.  Daddy pointed to one of the hearts.

“They’ve made a heart for each baby born this month and written the baby’s name on it.  This one right here,” Daddy tapped the heart, “says ‘Leah.’  This heart is for your sister. “  I  stared at the heart, fascinated at the word written on it, always fascinated by the words written. 

Daddy turned away from the bulletin board and crossed to the window.  Daddy scanned the babies in the bassinets.  Matt was just tall enough to see through the window to the babies.  Again, Daddy pointed.

“There she is.  Do you see her?  She’s the beautiful one with all the dark hair,” he said.  His voice buoyant with pride and hope.

Matt nodded, not turning from the window, not making a sound, barely breathing.  He was transfixed by this smaller sister, at the moment, as dark as I was fair.  

Then, Daddy turned to me and hoisted me up to see through the window.  

“Do you see her?” he asked. 

Immediately, I did.  Most of the infants surrounding her wore the tiny pink and blue bordered white caps intended to keep those bitty heads warm, but our Leah had no need of such.  My little heart swelled with pride at this, at her.

And, now more than 40 years later, a whisper to my heart, ‘A name written on a heart.  Remember.’

I sat forward and opened my eyes, smiling at the gentle gift of remembrance, and I made no mistake that it had been a gift.  From experience, I didn’t doubt that if I allowed unhurried contemplation to unfold at the back of my mind, I’d understand exactly what I was being shown.

Allowing my hands to resume their task, I thought about what inscrutable things hearts are.  As children, our black-and-white brains consider hearts to be solid and immutable.  What we love, who we love, who loves us, will remain steadfast.  Then, inevitably, our hearts get broken.   Sometimes, they are broken during childhood in desperate, tragic ways – ways that children should never see nor suffer, ways that bear neither discussion nor consideration.  Or maybe they’re broken in the softer, more traditional ways of childhood – schoolyard bullying (Although, this, too, should be a foregone byproduct of childhood.), lost ballgames and stage dreams, breakups of friendships, breakups of relationships that we had convinced ourselves would last beyond middle/high school/the week.  

Then, we grow up, even if we don’t feel grown up, and the heart lacerations suddenly become more far more treacherous with fissures cutting far into the reaches of our decades still to come – divorce or abandonment, financial collapse, betrayal at work, betrayal by spouses and friends, even betrayal by our own bodies.  When crystalline dreams shatter now, sweeping up the shards carries that much more effort, starting over with new dreams that much more intimidating.  When accusations from the people we love, or even strangers blindside us, finding the strength to stand up again seems just a little further from our center.  The surety cements then that human hearts are impermanent, fickle things, whose sole reliability is their unreliability, and perhaps, this very realization breaks us when we had managed to withstand the onslaught of the rest.  

And, a whisper, a tap – ‘Pay attention; here it is,’ came to me.  My mind (and heart) reach back to that red construction paper heart with Leah’s name written on it in indelible ink, and a tender tug on my Spirit says this is simply an echo of my name written on His hand.  If my heart breaks in this world – time and again if I’m lucky – the pain serves to remind me that I am still capable of loving at all, something I am able to do solely because He first loved me.  But if my heart breaks, shreds, disintegrates even, regardless of the rinse/repeat nature of this occurrence, the whole of me will not because my name was written on His hand before my heart beat its first.

Amen.

¹⁶ See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.  Isaiah 49:16