The Wooden Heart

Good morning relatives

I just got back from a great pt session!  I'm having my version of Moroccan chicken that I cooked for eight hours in my tagine yesterday.  Yummm it is yummmy  I wish I could serve all of you dinner and we could visit and laugh and play together for an evening.

I miss playing  laughing out loud and rolling around in the snow.  One of my exercises with my shoulder is to make snow angels!  well minnesota is the perfect place and February is the perfect month for snow angels.  

speaking of angels do you think they make snow angels in the clouds?

LOL
I have been working on my heart ever since my sister Rachael died.  Well that's not exactly true, the crowning death blow was when my dog Burnt Toast died three months after Racho.  that summer, my heart died in my chest. just gave up any and all sense of a core, heart connection to love.

I travelled alot that following year, I guess I was running away from my couch.  Racho used to spend tons of time on my couch, she loved the red leather, (i got it at an estate sale!) and that it was long and wide enough to cradle her long lanky frame while she took naps. Toast and i had also spent many a night curled up on that couch in front of the fire, reading together.

so I travelled to get away from my couch.

In the winter I was driving with my dogs through Iowa, and pulled into a rest stop.  wE got out and I put on their leashes to take a walk through the little woods there.  We had the pleasure of walking on paths in the snow.  It smelled so good.

in the middle space between two paths that met and crossed, there was an old mostly dead stump of a tree. its arms reached out to nothingness as they had long since been broken off. It looked like it had been struck by lightning, but at its base, on one side, new shoots were growing up. I could feel the Spirit of that tree calling me.
while I was driving I had been listening to Clarissa Pinkola Estes talk about hardening off our heartwood. She talked about how a young tree growing is affected by the wind and the seasons, it is supple and strong, yet it must, she said learn or allow the adverse fluctuations in the environment to "harden" off its heart wood, if it was to survive and grow to be a strong long lived tree.

I suppose as we all know the balance between being young and flexible, naive, and a heart that is hardened off, but not too hard, and being strong and long lasting  resistant if you will to the storms that life brings, is to not be rigid.  Rigidity and being too hard in our hearts can lead to death.

my heart did not feel rigid just dead  like a dead battery

As I approached that old tree, what was left of her, I saw that her heart was hollow, she was blackened and empty, or so it looked at first.  Something about her drew me closer, but not too close, and I saw that in her heart, in the hollow of her breast, there was built a nest. the space that had been created in her heart, had become the home, the safety for some animal.

I stepped back onto the path, in the snow, and placed tobacco for her and her graciousness.  Even in the most adverse of all endings to what had been a great life, (she was or had been at one time, a very large tree, her trunk was easily 2-3 feet across), she had opened up and given refuge to another life. She was cradling in her heart, protecting from the storms, a family.

I've thought about that tree in relation to my own heart. It has been most difficult for me to feel, truly feel, love again in my heart since the loss of my sister and my dog. Over the years I have felt it flutter, felt it stir, but truthfully, it has been many years since I have felt it beat with love.

one of the things that life has brought to me through the grandmothers, is the chance for me to reawaken my wooden heart. My friend Ele has played a big part in that reawakening. As we have become friends, we have both struggled with and carved out between us, the sculpture of our care, our bond.

Our most recent realignment of our hearts in the voyage of friendship, cracked open my heart a little bit. in that split between fear and old scars, she inserted a wedge of trust, and drove it home with her actions.  I'm not sure how it happened that my heart became so elusive to the trust of love. It's not what I want, or ever wanted. Nor am I sure how this particular friend found that spot that was still weak, still open to change. But she did . and when she drove home into that place that could still be carved with care, her commitment to listening, to showing up, to not running away, I stood still and let her do it.

last weekend I called her and asked her why it is that some hearts can stay connected, stay open through time, or events.?  She heard the word trust, from the ether as a response, it was about trust. Trust that a friend would be there, that they would hold the space of love, no matter what. I asked her why was it that she had a perfect connection of trust with a childhood friend?  and she said that she wasn't sure, they had played together.

that was it  I felt like another missing piece for my wooden heart had been found.  We need to play together.  to laugh  to make each other laugh and fall down arms akimbo and hug and snort, and cry and giggle
then I remembered an old movie that I saw when I was a kid. It was one of the Canadian Mountie movies, Rose-Marie its called. From that movie I can still remember the song. I sung it over and over as a kid. It's called "Indian Love Call."

so I found it on you tube and have imported it here for you relatives. I pray that we can hear the call of our hearts to each other and that no matter how hardened off they may be, they can hear that call.

sorry for the kissing, LOL its part of the movie.

lets do that relatives, the next time we see each other, sing and play and laugh.

love love love
mary