The beating heart.

I took my oldest daughter to the cardiac unit for an EKG and cardiac echo, just for a basic baseline checkup.

The nurse scandalised her by handed her a regulation blue cotton gown, and telling her "take everything off at the top, bra included, and leave it open at the front." She obeyed with a raised eyebrow, clutching it closed, as best she could. She was weighed and measured. She is just 2.5 inches shorter then me now, and gaining rapidly.

The EKG was routine. The nurse attached those sticky circles to her chest and told her to relax, which is difficult to do under the best of circumstances. Soon, it was over. Her heart rate monitored neatly like spiky stitches on graph paper.

At first, as the sonographer attached her own sticky circles, told her to relax and squirted on gel, it looked like this would be more of the same. That is, until the doppler played over her chest area and the grainy surreal image of a beating heart lit up the screen. The heart seemed to pulse with a profoundly automaton energy.
I found the cadence mesmerising, absolutely fascinating, awe inspiring even.
The sonogram image showed the entire heart, then examined each ventricle, valve and chamber, measuring each, while I watched the amazing organ at work. The blood flow influx and ouput charted in tones of red, orange and blue.
That heart, inside my daughter, its metered tempo, so wonderful, so fragile and yet so brilliantly, transcendently Godly.

It is strange, how the human heart, somehow has become the seat of passion, the seat of life, the seat of true feeling, true human experience and emotion, not of reason necessarily, but all we truly value deeply, because the heart is somehow where we source the wellspring of love.

It was eerily, completely, utterly beautiful.

and, thank God, she is just fine.

“Love is not written on paper, for paper can be erased. Nor is it etched on stone, for stone can be broken. But it is inscribed on a heart and there it shall remain forever.” Author Unknown

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.-- Deepak Chopra

A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die. A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry.-- Octavio Paz

"A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles." ~ Washington Irving (1783-1859)

Where is home? Home is where the heart can laugh without shyness. Home is where the heart's tears can dry at their own pace. -Vernon Baker.