Month: March 2014

Houses in Your Heart

/ Cheryl / Leave a comment

“Maybe there aren’t any such things as good friends or bad friends – maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you’re hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they’re always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for too, if that’s what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.”

~ It by Stephen King

I have never read a novel or short story by Stephen King. Ever. It is unlikely that I ever will because that level of horror and darkness would trigger my imagination in unpleasant ways (understatement). That said, he has imbedded within his writing truths that I find beautiful. I am thankful for a friend who shares these gems with me including this one. I did find a synopsis of the novel so that I could understand the context of this quote, at least a bit. No, I will never read the full book. Ever.

At different points in my life, I have thought about what friendship is, about what a friend is – and what a friend is not. This image of “people who build their houses in your heart” is beautiful to me. So, I am imagining what kinds of houses these might be because not all friendships are the same. In my own life, there are some who because of life pathways have merely pitched a tent in my heart for a time. A few of these friends have left an imprint on my heart that will forever be part of who I am. A piece of the tent will always be with me. I am pretty sure we all have had a few tents pitched in their hearts.

Others build more permanent structures, cabins perhaps [I really like cabins], but may merge into and out of our day-to-day lives. These are the friends whom we might not see for a year or more yet that lapse in time does not diminish the bond whatsoever. I am thinking of the cabins that surround many of Michigan’s lakes, cabins I visited as a child. They sit empty for much of the year, but are opened up to life and laughter and shared moments every summer.

Other people have real and permanent homes with solid foundations in our hearts – cozy houses with fireplaces and comfy chairs, yards and trees and flowers, with back doors we know are always open for us. We may or may not see these friends everyday, but we know they are always there, and they know we are always there too.

For any of these houses to be built in our hearts, we must have our hearts open. Many of us go through seasons when we want to put up a “No Lots Available” sign, and we can do this on our faces without realizing it. In opening our hearts to people, to friendship, there is a vulnerability that can be scary, especially when we have been hurt. It can also be deeply humbling when we find a person’s house just seems to appear without warning, a house and a friend we cannot imagine was ever not in the neighborhood of our heart.

 

 

Memories… “like photographic slides”

/ Cheryl / Leave a comment

“The sky is black and studded with stars. I feel the sand of the beach beneath my shoes and think of the summers in Provincetown with Jacob Kahn. How memory accordions time and places disparate moments next to one another like photographic slides on a tray!”

~ The Gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

Memories…they do slip into our minds and line up beside each other, sometimes in a jumble. Often they are triggered out of the blue when one of our senses is sparked as happens for Asher Lev in the passage above as he feels the sand under his feet. One memory tends to beget other memories, connected in ways only the synapses of our brain seems to know. Sometimes the images of our memories are a jumble, but other times there is a theme that makes itself known. March will always be a month that plays in my memory slide shows of me and my dad.

Here I am sitting beside my daddy at Dunkin’ Donuts wearing a navy blue coat. This would have been one of our “early days” – so a Tuesday or Thursday – when he had to take me to nursery school a little early. I am eating my favorite (at the time) powdered sugar cake donut, and Daddy has that funny “dunkin'” donut with the little nub of a handle so he can dunk it in his coffee. (Do they even still make those?) That dusty sugar loved to fall onto my coat…and Dad would lovingly brush it off.

In this picture, I am with all of the neighborhood kids and my dad in the intersection of Calhoun and Grove Streets in Mishawaka, Indiana – best place in the whole world for a pick-up kickball game! [Or softball with plastic ball and that big red bat.] Our corner was home plate, and Dad was always the pitcher. Oh, how my friends loved to be with my dad. He was probably the “busiest” dad any of us had, yet he gave us the gift of his time – as well as instructing us on how to precisely time the planting of one foot so the other foot could connect with the ball just so….

Here we have a hodgepodge of fishing memories… With Grandpa Bill in a little lake in Liberty, Indiana, fishing for bluegill … on the shore of little Oly Lake (I truly do not know how to spell that) in Illinois working to reel in a snarky bullhead … learning how to get the worm onto the hook without hooking my finger … on “Monkey Island” fishing just to fish, maybe pulling up a tiny little sunfish … on a bigger lake in Illinois learning to use a casting rod (so different from the cane pole I still prefer) so we could catch bass … digging for worms in our little garden … stopping at the funny little bait shop being both grossed out and fascinated by all the wiggly things to put on hooks.

Memories can bring simultaneous smiles and tears….just as music does for me (as it is doing even as I type). Our stories are made of all our memories, the ones that hide deep within as well as those that are stored always near the surface, the hardest ones as well as those most precious. All of them shape who we are both individually as well as who we are in the context of our relationships. The sharing of memories, whether through music or words or other arts or even just by being who we are, is to me a precious gift.

“You’d be different in some way…”

/ Cheryl / Leave a comment

“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and they’re pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you’d be so much older or anything. It wouldn’t be that, exactly. You’d just be different, that’s all. You’d have an overcoat this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you’d have a new partner. Or you’d have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you’d heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you’d just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you’d be different in some way—I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.”

~ The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

This passage touches on two themes I have been pondering lately. If you’ve never read The Catcher in the Rye, wonderful! Read it this year. If you have read it, wonderful! Read it again this year. You will be different as you read it, just as Holden is observing in this passage. Each day brings little happenings or sightings or feelings or connections that do not change our essence but “add” to us in some way, changing the filter through which we experience even that which is everyday for us. For this to happen, we must be as aware as Holden is – we must take in the sounds and sights and smells around us and be moved by them, even if only a bit. I want to be both interested and interesting, keeping each of my senses aware to the world around me – to both the big picture and even more so to the tiny and simple pictures.

The inability to express in words what we mean when we share an observation such as this is the other theme I have been thinking about frequently. I have found myself at times trying so hard to put into words a thought I want to share that I begin to forget the essential beauty of the thought that touched me in the first place. Sometimes, thoughts are so precious that to share them and bring them into the light leaves us feeling a vulnerability that again can rob our thoughts of some of their preciousness. How beautiful that music and art can express these thoughts without words. How blessed is the poet who can express with words – just the right words and no more. What a treasure to have a friend who can understand the essential beauty in my thoughts and observations without any need to put them to words — when even if I could, I’m not sure I’d want to.