heartbeats

sinus rhythm is a medical term used to describe the normal beating of a heart. i have taken my heart for granted and not thought not much about it. like the mail that always comes or the furnace that always turns on or the car that always starts, even when it is 13 below. my little heart, quiet and dependable except when it has ached or been broken. time heals, love fills, friends warm, and the beats keep coming and coming in perfect succession like giant penguins marching towards spring. until one day it speaks up and asks for more attention. an insistent personality emerges in flippity beats and small starts and tiny stops. and then it races. faster and faster and faster as if my chest is a starting gate it intends to tear down and rip through. lucky me, they say. lucky that i can feel it misbehaving, misfiring, misinforming...some people can't feel it and fall into the terror of stroke, and sometimes they re-emerge and sometimes they do not. lucky me.

take your meds and an aspirin a day and hope for sinus rhythm. "listen to your heart", advice i have always given and received, presents a new context, challenge, and worry. and yet the possibility of an unwelcome stillness also sparks a new reality of living life with greater intention. it's still okay to leave the laundry unfolded, but be sure that any other of life's wrinkles are straightened out and put away.

life is to be lived in sinus rhythm.