"I carry your heart (I carry you in my heart)." --e.e. cummings
When I left Parkview, one of my students created this painting and presented it to me on behalf of the whole squad. Several students would make this sign to me with their hands at various times, and I would either reciprocate, clutch my heart, hug them, pound their knuckles, tell them I loved them, or any combination thereof. So this painting was the perfect symbol of my feelings for them and for our team. I was touched to believe it was how they felt about me, especially when I was the most flawed of us all much of the time.
This painting hangs now in my favorite room in the house: it is a little room in the basement with my exercise stuff in it (my favorite being my sofa with wheels, the recumbent bike on which I sit and pedal and write--as I am now--while watching Bravo.) Outside the glass doors to this room is the vast basement where the kids come and go while I sweat and think with my thumbs. Surrounding the painting are pictures drawn by my own children. It is a solid retreat for me, with constant reminders that love is the thing...even when biking and watching pointless, trashy tv.
Tonight this heart painting is acutely in my focus, as my heart is beating for people I love who are in peril. Unnecessary are the specifics of their fears or suffering. Suffice it to say, though, that as the poet best described, today it is my heart--not my hands--that holds theirs.
I am grateful that my heart is equipped to do some lifting now, when it matters most. There have been times, see, when they carried mine for me.
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