Heartclasp

The human heart is not quite five inches long. The first inch of my heart broke on a snowy night in January when I saw a kitten fall through the thin crust of ice coating a pond as we drove past on our way to my grandmother’s house. I gasped and cried and begged my parents to stop, but they knew it would be too late no matter what and kept going, though we all wept softly for the kitten the whole way. My grandmother’s house was filled with warm yellow and orange colors and the scent of food and three weeks later we would go to the animal shelter and adopt a kitten, but, still, that night, I snuck up into the dark attic, opened the tiny window there and gathered some snow. I carefully shaped a small kitten from it and let my hands freeze as the snow slowly melted, and I felt the kitten shaped clasp form inside me, holding the broken edges of my heart together.

You would think that, the teenage years being what they are, I’d’ve been done for halfway through, but, really, most of what feels like heartbreak is more of a wrench, and I worked my way through just fine.

…

You know, I really don’t want to talk about the next one. Let’s just take it as given, shall we? The clasp is a plain black bar.

My grandfather died of cancer in his mid-sixties. He and I were never really close, but I really, really loved my dad. Daddy was a strong man, solid and reliable. We buried my grandfather on one of those grey, drizzling days that eat at your soul. I stood beside my father and he raised his hand to place it on the coffin just before it went in. His hand shook. My father’s hand shook and I laid mine gently on top and felt something break inside. That one is shaped like clasped hands.

Funny, though; both my parents are gone and neither one added a clasp. I always expected them to go before me, and so it was no shock when they did. Shock makes the heart more brittle, I suppose, and thus more likely to break. But it doesn’t have to be a shock.

I knew my husband was leaving long before he left. We had been friends, such good friends, and we had loved each other so intensely. He took up golf. I took up bowling. On Tuesdays, he went to the bar with his friends. On Fridays, I went out with the girls. I read the news on my laptop. He read it on his phone. We never exchanged articles. Instead of growing together, we grew apart. Midnight, outside, I sat on a bench braiding together two flower stems and learned my lesson.

I wouldn’t trade back that clasp, though, because then I met your father, and, man, but that was wonderful. We were two ships passing in the night, but what a night! Sometimes it takes only twenty four hours to learn everything you will ever need to know about a person, and them the same, and it’s perfect and good and right. And I got you out of it! The greatest joy of my life, you were, so, yeah. Not an ounce of heartbreak there. It’s a good thing, too. I’ve got just enough left for one more break. So be good, baby. I love you.