Three Years...

Three years…

An exploding heart imprints a six inch scar.  A footprint in the sand. A line drawn on a map symbolizing not mortality but survival. Leaving but a small reminder that The Force is strong.  Three days in ICU. Five days in a hospital bed. One month on the couch with soap operas and Oprah. A five minute walk is the distance from Marathon to Athens and then I’m running again. Leaving fear in my wake only not really.

Running. Breaking my foot. Stopping. Running again. And again. Always running. Where am I going and how will I know when I get there?

Pirouettes done with childish passion. Dance classes and recitals. Wrapping The Nutcracker’s Gingerchild in my arms like a gift. Holiday traffic and Christmas carols. Shopping for Christmas gifts and having to let someone else do it.  

Fights. Tears. Smiles. Laughter. Fear. Courage. More fear. More courage.

New sports and new friends make me feel small. And now I’m banished to the passenger seat to discover that there are some things scarier than open heart surgery.

Complete and utter failure. Who says? Whose failure? What is failure anyway except a chance to do something new, different, better? Waiting for that “something new” to knock at the door and rescue me, yet it never does. Finally realize that I’m going to have to open the door, walk through it and rescue myself.  Alone.  Discover, AGAIN, some things are scarier than open heart surgery.

Reaching out through cyberspace with tentative staccato keystrokes like a heartbeat and Unravelling. Finding my stories old, and new, in my iphone. Centeredness.

Focusing on what I might have missed when suddenly tears transform my perspective and new shapes begin to emerge, the shape of a woman’s body in a Picasso and see what I have. What I love. What makes my heart explode over and over again.