Walking into the book store, a beautiful blond girl whisked past me on her way out. She did not make eye contact, did not even glance at me. I wrote a love poem for her in my heart. I held on to it very tightly for a moment before letting it go. She would never know how perfect it was. It could never be more perfect than that.
The book store embraces me, a magical realm since my childhood. I love the smell of the paper and the colorful quilts of covers arranged on every possible surface, stacks of books, cities of words huddled silently. I run my fingers over them as I browse, savoring the different textures. I think of my favorite writers, living and dead, and wonder which books here might attract their attention. I whisper to the books as I browse, comforting them, assuring them that I will be back for them some day, one at a time.
In the greeting card section, I scan the birthday cards on the rack. What kind of card do you get your father for his 70th birthday? Which of these colorful folds of paper will communicate your feelings over so many miles to a man you hardly speak to anymore? The grumpy clown or the watercolor flower? The birthday cake or the cartoon bulldog in a party hat? I sigh. The same sigh as my father.
The only book my father ever read was The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe. Though he said he liked it, he hasn’t cracked another book since. I don’t know if he just isn’t a reader or if that particular book just scared him so deeply in his soul that he decided no book would ever be worth that sort of risk again. He has since collected several books that he said he intended to read. He still says he intends to read them. I smile and nod. The books stay on the top shelf, dusty and quiet.
I decide that greeting cards are a sham. They are a heartless racket profiting from people’s gross inability to adequately communicate their feelings. They are a physical endorsement of giving up even trying. I would rather receive a torn scrap of paper with a little heart drawn on it in pencil than a greeting card bought at a store. I leave the store without buying a greeting card for my father. His 70th birthday is a week away and I will create something more significant, something genuine, a personal treasure that will erase all the fear from his heart.
My father’s heart is a delicate thing. I know for a fact that it is the most tender heart in the whole world. I know because only a heart so tender would dare push everyone in life away. It’s a defensive measure, and I understand it, and I forgive him. Everything hurts less if it is far away. I’m sure he would have buried the thing if he only believed he could dig a hole deep enough to protect it. But no hole could ever be deep enough to protect a heart this honest and true. I believe that this is why he divorced my mother. He had grown tired of digging.
70 years is a lot for a tender heart like his; a lot of joy, a lot of laughter, and all the sadness and loneliness that accumulate and hide beneath these things. It is a wretched day when you discover the sadness in your father’s heart. This holy muscle that you grew up revering as capable only of joy and wonder, of love for you, had been lying to you your whole life. And when you find these savage bruises, sighing heavily in some dark corner, it is so overwhelming because it’s actually a testament to the bruises that hide in everyone’s hearts. These are the bruises that even time doesn’t heal, the chink in the golden armor, the loose thread that will eventually unravel the whole façade, exposing all your hopes and dreams to the elements. If I could absorb his bruises into my own, I would.
I decide to build a monument to my father’s heart. For his birthday I will build a giant wooden heart out of Popsicle sticks and Elmer’s glue, glass soda bottles and saltwater taffy. I will build it how it would have stood before all the bruises. I will build it weather-resistant and sturdy enough to bet your life on, and I will make it so beautiful that once seen it will be impossible to walk away from. It will be a heart incapable of loneliness. People will come from all over the world to marvel at its magnificence, to bask in its tenderness. They will smile at it lovingly and laugh at its jokes. They will tell it stories and kiss it goodnight. They will pray for its safety and comfort and never take it for granted. It will be the heart that my father deserved, that we all deserve.
When I was a kid I used to crawl under the floorboards of our house while the old man was watching TV. I would wriggle through the dirt and cobwebs until I was just under the armchair where he reclined, and I would listen for sounds of his heart. Mostly I would just hear the muffled drone of news anchors prattling about the horrors of the world, but sometimes he would mute the TV, and I knew he was watching sitcoms, preferring to read people’s faces than to listen to the recycled story lines. And while he sat there deciphering the hidden intentions buried beneath each actor’s expressions, I would listen for the sound of his heart. And when he sighed, I would sigh with him, so many years ago, exactly the same sigh.
