This Old Heart of Mine

  A few minutes ago, I was standing in the grocery store, sobbing. I read the words in front of me over and over, awed by their simplicity and truth. Let me back up - yesterday I had an unusual experience. Not a bad one, but strange. You know how sometimes a situation seems almost surreal and you feel like you have to tell someone, to put it out there and make it real? Well that was last night. My first and only instinct was to tell my friend B. No one else would do, no one else would understand. I needed to confide something complex, emotional, and deeply personal, so of course I chose . . . um, someone I barely know.  I didn't meet B. very long ago ago and we have spent almost no time together. We know each other primarily through a handful of electronic email exchanges. But there is something that connects us, something inexplicable but wonderful. B. told me that I "get" her. This is nothing new; people tell me all the time that I "get" them like no one else ever has. But what doesn't happen is people "getting" me back. But B. gets me. She really gets me. There are moments when it feels like we're women in a news story about twins separated at birth and reunited as adults - they run into each other's arms, crying, instantly joined as if they'd never been apart. Except that we're not twins. When B. was born, I was graduating from college. And yet, we are connected in this crazy and beautiful way. I sometimes feel like I want to explain it, but mostly I just want to embrace it. What a gift to stumble upon someone who can hear what my heart speaks and understand what my soul feels. 

  And so it was that I sent B. a message last night about my strange experience. And she wrote back and completely understood why I did what I did, what I was feeling, why I was feeling it, and what it all meant. And then today, I went to the grocery store. I pushed my cart past a display of magnets and one caught my eye: "Your heart and my heart have been friends for a very, very long time." YES! That's it exactly! Our hearts have been friends for a very long time. And I cried. Right there next to the self-checkout line. I don't know if people were staring; I was oblivious. I was just overwhelmed with the joy and gratitude of having found a heart that had known my heart for a very, very long time.