Open Your Heart to Me, Baby

It’s a good thing I don’t have a green thumb or an afghan to knit. On this little journey of mine to become a freelance writer I am quickly learning how tough it is finding time to write. Between working forty hours, spending quality time with my nice lady, spending quality time with the great outdoors, sleeping, cooking, eating, pooping, and doing the laundry, it gets real tricky trying to squeeze in typing. Consequently, I haven’t posted anything in over a week. Unnacceptable I know. So here I am, at 7:30 in the morning, trying to produce something in one short hour worthy of being read, and already I need more coffee. Let me go warm up my cup, and then I’ll fill you in a bit. That's better. Now my synapses are starting to fire. Let's see where they take me.

On my commute a few mornings ago, I came upon a large snapping turtle, let’s call her Gertie, creeping along a grassy patch of land beside the busy road, a good crawl from the creek. She was brown and about the size of a small charcoal grill lid. I came to a stop and stood there, and watched as Gertie meandered about in no particular fashion and seemingly for no particular purpose other than to go for a walk. It was a stark contrast to the cars that zoomed by, and to my purpose of riding my bicycle, which was to get to work, but watching Gertie take her slow, robotic-like steps slowed the rapid pace of summer down just a bit. I remained watching, on turtle time, while she went about her business, whatever that was, until a minivan pulled over, a head popped out of the window, and asked, “Are you looking at the turtle?” Abruptly thrust back into reality, I said, “I was, yeah,” and then pedaled off. I was slightly annoyed by this interruption paired with a really dumb question, but who knows how long I would’ve been stuck standing there in a turtle vortex. As it turned out, I made it to work on time, so I suppose I should appreciate that head in the minivan.

The next day however, I was quite late. But I had a good reason to be late. My nice Mother-in-law to be and I went with my lovely fiancée to her annual cardiology appointment. She’s had three open-heart surgeries in her lifetime, so once a year, they like to check in on all those valves, chambers and orifices and see what’s new, in hopes that absolutely nothing is new. They started by asking a lot of questions and checking her blood pressure. It was slightly high, as it tends to be, but within the normal range. They then brought out a machine that looked like a mechanical octopus, with many dangling wires like tentacles that were attached to different places on her chest. The rhythmic activities of her heartbeat were displayed as numerous uneven lines on a small monitor, which were then printed out like a stock report for her file. We then went to a second room and met her doctor, who listened to her heart with a stethoscope and then got right down to chatting. Having been my lovely fiancée’s cardiologist for the past sixteen years, she’s kind of like a second mom, so getting caught up on life is as important a part of the appointment as anything else. When I told her that I was prepared to support this aspiring doctor in any way I can while she’s in medical school, she said I’m a keeper. Although I’ve earned the approval of the mom, the dad, and even the “big” brother, it still felt good to earn the approval of another very important person in my fiancée’s life: the role model. We then made our way to the third and final room where they performed a sonogram to really get a good look at that thing. Inside and out, and from every possible angle, we observed one particularly strong heart perfectly doing its job pumping blood throughout that wonderful body of hers.

A lot of people have captured the heart of the one they love, but not everyone can say that they’ve actually seen it. My heart certainly skipped a beat.