STONE COLD HEART

This entry is in keeping with my February theme of hearts and love, but it does not have a flowery, sweet sentiment attached to it. For the heart is not always full of love and kindness, is it?

"Stone cold...and I thought I knew you so well."

I cannot think of anyone I know who has not experienced having a stone cold heart at least once. A heart turned frozen because of the actions of another. For those of us who tend to more easily and willingly share our hearts, having it abused can be devastating. It does not have to be at the hands of someone with whom she was intimate, although it often is. It can be due to a loved friend whose words were poisonous, leaving her with an ice-cold heart.

 

"Your words like ice fall on the ground, breaking the silence without a sound."

When such a thing occurs, the heart can suddenly grow cold. Very cold. It becomes almost effortless to view the one who caused the damage with a detached sense of dislike. Loathing, even. It continues to remain quite warm and still beats and works its magic for the others we love. It is the person who has tainted it who is the recipient of the crystals of ice.

 

Deservedly so.

 

"So many changes, so many lies."

Hearts are not something to be tampered with for the sake of ego, a twisted idea of power or control, or just because it is thought "fun." Not everyone would agree with that. The heart is fair game to them. And for anyone who gives pieces of their heart to those they care about deeply, heart thieves such as those are in their glory. They can snatch and take bits of someone's heart. When circumstances turn sour, they think nothing at all about running off with that scrap of heart and defiling it in whatever manner they wish.

 

"Oh familiar strangers with nothing to say."

Those who are the recipients of that type of behavior usually react in one of two ways. Their hearts break down and a huge wave of sadness engulfs them, OR their hearts grow cold.

 

"You're stone cold...ice cold."

My preference is to have an icy heart. There is a clarity that becomes apparent while viewing the hurtful individual through the sharp icicles. It allows me to have a very real, very solid look at the person who has marred my heart. Far better to have that than to be swamped with emotional tears and exaggerated feelings. Yes, the cold heart I develop allows for a more rational, logical, and crystal clear thought process.

 

"You put me in the deep freeze."

Whether or not a thawing ever occurs towards that person is impossible to say. It has before. If it will again is a question with no certain answer. If I could choose, I would want my heart to remain in a deep freeze concerning the person who violated it.

 

I believe it is called self-preservation.

 

 

(Quoted lyrics from Rainbow's song, Stone Cold)

Tags: stone cold, heart, self-preservation

I HEART MY FRIENDS

In my real world AND in my online world, I do "heart" my friends. The friendships I have developed through the years are solid ones. The older I get, It becomes more and more obvious just who genuinely cares for and about me. And heaven knows I care about them. Be they younger, older, the same age as I, male or female, they have shown me the true meaning of friendship. I am grateful for them. It is my hope they are equally pleased with me and what I bring to them.

There, I needed and wanted to express that. ::smile::

 

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." ~Anais Nin

Tags: friends, friendship, Anais Nin

HEARTFELT MEMORY

It is one of the best but most bittersweet memories I have. It was the witnessing of the sharing of two hearts. Two people giving pieces of that vital organ of theirs to each other just when it was most needed. When this recollection surfaces, it still causes my heart to melt and my eyes to brim over with tears.

When Daddy's brain aneurysm ruptured and surgery was required, my daughter was in the fourth grade. Still too young to fully understand the ramifications of such a drastic procedure, but completely aware of the fragile status of his condition.

 

He was in Neuro ICU. A private room. He had been taken off of the respirator, but he was not able to speak. He slept most of the day. His right hand was still balled up and unresponsive. Part of his head had been shaven, and the enormous incision was harshly visible.

 

We spent countless hours with him, day and night. His condition fluctuated from day to day...hour to hour, actually. Our children were not allowed to visit him yet. Hospital rules.

 

It was on a sunny day that brought bright light through the large window into his room that one of our favorite nurses told us she felt it would be good for Daddy to have his grandchildren visit him. One at a time. Stagger the visits. Were any of our children out in the waiting room, she asked. My daughter was. I had brought her with me to the hospital, so I could see Daddy for a short time before returning there later in the evening by myself. This nurse asked me if I thought my daughter could handle seeing her grandfather like "this." I was unsure, but I said I would ask her. My fear was that she would be horrified by the scar on his head and his inability to speak and that she might cry, which would upset him. I went to the waiting room and asked her. She wanted very much to see him. I told her what to expect. She still wanted to see him.

 

My mother, two of my sisters, and the nurse were in the room when I brought in my daughter. I led her to the side of Daddy's bed. The side of his which had the "good" hand. And the light in the room seemed to embrace both of them. Daddy's eyes filled with tears and a smile curved his lips. My daughter's smile was radiant. And then he slowly and with much effort lifted his hand, reaching up to her. He tenderly cupped the side of her face in his beautiful, large hand. Time truly stood still. Their eyes met and held while we all stood there transfixed by the sight. The nurse began to weep and quietly exited the room. His hand returned to the bed, and he lay there. We all swallowed the lumps in our throat and made some small talk. Then, he reached up yet again to press his hand against her cheek and held it there. My daughter's glowing smile continued to shine on him. His misty eyes sparkling into hers.

 

Within a few minutes, his eyes drifted closed. I instructed my daughter to wait outside of the door while I went over a few things with my mother and sisters. During our hushed conversation, we thought of a question we wanted to ask the nurse. My sister stepped out of the room to find her. And huddled against the wall was my daughter. She was sobbing uncontrollably. My sister stuck her head in the room and motioned for me to come out. I sunk to my knees and hugged my little girl, telling her she had been so brave and so strong for Papa. I told her how much he loved her, and how her visit was like the best medicine for him in the whole wide world. And she calmed down.

 

What great effort she put forth to refrain from showing her pain during her visit with her beloved Papa. And what strong effort he put into letting her know how very much he loved her. They both gave each other pieces of their hearts that day.

 

And I was blessed to have witnessed it.

 

"The heart that truly loves never forgets." ~Proverb

A MATTER OF THE HEART

Where I live, the cold weather has ushered in this month of February. For many, the frigid temperatures are despised, and those people are impatiently awaiting the arrival of spring. Not I! I am more than content with the winter weather. In fact, I revel in it.

But February. Ah, February. It is the month designated for lovers and loved ones. Valentine's Day resides in this month. Is that not enough to warm you when you are bemoaning yet more snow or howling winds?

 

I think throughout this month, the majority of my journal entries will be about the heart. It is fitting, methinks. That idea came to me moments ago while I was thinking about hearts. Broken hearts, in particular.

 

No matter our ages, no one has escaped having a piece of their heart ripped away. Some people experience it more than others. Some frequently do the destroying; others do the healing. How often have we felt our hearts have been torn apart? Perhaps losing someone we desperately loved, or maybe when something caused terrible distress for our children. Our hearts feel that pain. We may think we shall never recover from the agonizing hurt.

 

But just like the patchwork heart depicted above, we piece our own hearts back together. We do have the means to do it ourselves if we try. It is pure bliss when someone mends it for us, knowingly or unknowingly. Love again finds us, and with it we regain a new scrap to replace the missing one. It is carefully sewn into place, perhaps secured with a button. The thread weaving it tightly to the adjoining areas. And each time we lose another piece due to some calamity, something or someone comes along with just enough extra heart to fill our own. We also find the more love we give to others, the more we receive. Piece for piece.

 

Time wears on, and the quilt begins to get ragged. Holes may start to appear. The thread loses its strength bit by bit, day by day. And just when it seems beyond repair, along comes that special someone or a cherished memory with enough thread and heart to fix it.  

 

Really, were we to be able to see the emotional scars our hearts bear, I think they would resemble a patchwork quilt. The colors would not all be the same. The patterns would differ. The sizes of the pieces would be irregular. But together, they hold strong. And maybe, just maybe, it is those variations that make our hearts even more beautiful than they used to be when untouched by tragedies or heartaches.

 

Yes, I believe that.

 

"The heart will break, but broken live on." ~Lord Byron

Tags: Valentine's Day, February, heart, heartache

BLASTS FROM THE PAST (Repost from January 3, 2005)

Monday, January 3, 2005
2:41:00 AM EST
Feeling Chillin'
Hearing What Do The Simple Folk Do~from Camelot

Blasts from the Past

::singing......."What do the simple folk do to help them escape when they're blue?"::

I got to thinking about how I killed time when I was a kid. Geez, there were tons of things to do and play. Running around outside playing kick the can, tag, red rover, girls chase boys or boys chase girls (yeah, that game is still being played well into adulthood along with "Doctor"), hide 'n seek.

But, it was the toys and games I was mainly recalling. We had some kick-ass stuff. Granted, they weren't computer games or other overly high-tech toys. Didn't matter. They were still awesome. Some of the games are still around today. They'd be called classic games, though. Ugh. That makes me sound as if I am ancient (well, I'm NOT). Those games would be Battleship, Monopoly, Operation, Clue, and so on. Most have been updated and are way cool.

There were amazing games/toys that today would be banned and deemed dangerous as hell. It wouldn't be an unfair label, either. The things WERE dangerous. One of my favorites was probably one of the most hazardous. It was called Vac-U-Form. You were given these colored squares of plastic, you slipped them onto this 70 bazillion degree metal mold, and then you closed the lid until the plastic could be molded from the heat into the shape you chose (in twofriggin' seconds). Ah, the smell of the plastic as it heated was good. The smell of your flesh burning from accidentally touching the metal wasn't so pleasant. You whipped up the lid, let the plastic cool, then you trimmed away the portions that weren't part of the shape. You could paint them...add wheels (if you'd chosen the car mold)...or even glue on a jewelry pin, so it could be worn. Ha! My sister had her school picture taken with this really ugly Vac-U-Form turtle pin she made and painted. Throw in that she had buck teeth then, too, and she was a real looker. We've never let her forget that.

Along those lines were two other fire-causing toys I particularly liked. One was called Creepy Crawlers. Same premise as Vac-U-Form in that metal molds were used, but you squeezed colored goop into the mold before dropping it into the friggin' kiln. ::laugh:: I loved how you could mix the colors together and end up with awesome looking spiders and worms and butterflies. Incredible Edibles was pretty much the exact same, except the goop was edible (duh, hence the name). Oooo...you made your own gummy worms essentially. I loved messing with that stuff.

I really do like that my family was into playing games. We had a blast with this giant Skittles game. Damn, Mom still has it. It was a huge wood rectangular "box" maybe 5' long, with wood bowling pins, and tops with strings. You wrapped the string around the top and whipped it to set it hopping out of the entrance and on its way to knock down the strategically placed pins with varying point values. That sucker would sometimes hop the gate on its way out. Of course, all of us had our own unique style of wrapping the string to coax the best performance from our tops. ::sigh:: All six of us played that. We reallllllly had fun.

We four girls fought like crazy playing games like Booby-Trap (outta the gutter, pervs...it's a GAME that doesn't involve body touching). The object was to pull out a round disk without moving the wood bar on the spring-loaded board. Amazing just how friggin' keen our eyesight was when it wasn't our own turn. ::snicker:: "It moved...it moved...we all saw it move...it's my turn...cheater...Mommmmmmm, she's cheating." Pick-Up-Sticks was the same damn way. Of course the sticks were practically flying across the room when it wasn't your turn. But when YOU picked up one, the air didn't even move. Lordy, we bitched at each other a lot during games like those. God love Mom. I do not recall her ever yelling at us during those times. Well, 'cept for the one "game" I played with my little sister ONCE. I called it the Match Game. Me: "Hey, wanna see a match burn twice?" Her: "Yes." Me: Lighting a match and saying, "One"...then blowing out the match and immediately holding it on her thigh while it burned her and saying "Two." God, I got in HUGE trouble for that. Mom nailed me with that damn flyswatter...and Daddy spanked me when Mom told him about it. Maybe I wasn't such a cute lil kid after all. (I don't care. I'm still sitting here laughing about that.)

And so here it is, 2005 and all sorts of nifty toys are available for kids. Some would have been fun to have had when I was wee little. But, I think everyone is left with some wonderful memories regardless of what toys were available. It isn't really the game as much as the fact you were involved in the playing of a game with your peers, your family, or whomever.

Today's quote:

"You just wait until your father gets home!" ~My Mom and everyone else's Mom

Tags: childhood games, Vac-U-Form, Creepy Crawlers

DISPOSABLE DARLING

This seven-minute live version of Roxy Music singing "In Every Dream Home A Heartache" is dark and eerily erotic. The lyrics are haunting, and the guitar is fabulous. It is one of those songs I fell in love with the very first time I heard it. I do adore it when friends tell me about a song (as was the case with this one), and I like it an extraordinary amount.

Do give it a listen. After all, if you dislike it, it is only seven minutes out of your life that you will never get back. ::smile::

Oh, and I think you will notice that my music tastes are eclectic, to say the least.

Here are the lyrics to it, because the Brit accent can be difficult at times to understand:

In every dream home a heartache
And every step I take
Takes me further from heaven
Is there a heaven?
I`d like to think so
Standards of living
They´re rising daily
But home oh sweet home
It´s only a saying
From bell push to faucet
In smart town apartment
The cottage is pretty
The main house a palace
Penthouse perfection
But what goes on
What to do there
Better pray there

Open plan living
Bungalow ranch style
All of its comforts
Seem so essential
I bought you mail order
My plain wrapper baby
Your skin is like vinyl
The perfect companion
You float in my new pool
Deluxe and delightful
Inflatable doll
My role is to serve you
Disposable darling
Can´t throw you away now
Immortal and life size
My breath is inside you
I´ll dress you up daily
And keep you till death sighs
Inflatable doll
Lover ungrateful
I blew up your body
But you blew my mind

Oh those heartaches
Dreamhome heartaches

Tags: Roxy Music, live performance

SWEET SLUMBER

It was during the middle of the nite. The darkest dark of nite. She was sound asleep, surrounded by oversized pillows, and nestled beneath her new quilted bedspread. I could hear the soft sound of her breathing. The fragrant scent of her shampoo and body wash hung in the air. The only light in the room was cast from a dim night-light. I stood at the foot of the bed just looking at my baby girl. She seemed so small in that queen-sized bed. Memories chased around my mind. I had an almost overwhelming urge to scoop her up into my arms and simply cradle her.  Quite a few minutes passed while I resisted the temptation to awaken her to hold her. Then, I left her room.

She is 20 years old. I am her mother. And that scene took place last week.

 

In many ways it is the same scene that has occurred over and over these past twenty years. I recall the tiny six-pound newborn who looked far too small sleeping in her crib. She was dwarfed by the size of that crib. Countless times I stood watch over her slumber. I listened for the sounds of her breathing and watched for the rhythmic and gentle rise and fall of her chest while she slept. The fresh and sweet scent of her permeated my senses. She was so perfect. I wanted to lift her into my arms and rock her. I wanted to feel her warmth against me. To let her know she was safe and loved. That she would be for all of time. Sometimes I gave into the urge and swept her into my arms and against my heart.

 

I should have given in the other nite.

 

"The only thing worth stealing is a kiss from a sleeping child." ~Joe Houldsworth 

Tags: child, sleeping