Every once in a while and not often enough, Gustavo comes over to give me a massage. He brings his whole spa on wheels–portable massage table, heating pad, sheet, towel, cushions for the head and knees, mini music player, creams and two of the most powerful hands in the business.
So there we are, hard at work on my right shoulder, listening to a baby-faced Tony Bennett crooning his signature hit, when Gustavo asks me, “Where did you leave your heart?” He may have been just trying to make conversation, riffing off the title of the song, but the question stopped me cold.
I started thinking of love in my life, remembered by the feeling of joy like honey, sweet, smooth and warm flowing from my heart. You know, those tingles of excitement when you’re around the person who is the lodestone to your magnet, the eye of your hurricane. Then there’s the heavy cloud in your chest, clamping down on your breathing, at the mere sight of them. Or what about being away from them and unable to relax or sit still until you can see them or hear their voice again. The two of you forming a communion of minds that flash and spark a perpetual conversation on art and politics and science and the play you just saw, while cooking, or driving, or reading the Sunday paper curled up on the couch with Coltrane blowing in the background. A delicious pain in your heart, almost to tears at the thought of them, then laughter rising, a babbling brook spilling over the banks of your tongue and cheek and mouth, so happy are you to be loving and loved. Then there’s your reward at the end of the day, that feeling of utter rest and safety found in each other’s arms. To be connected somewhere, with someone. A pair complete.
Once I could recall and relive the feeling, I started flipping through my life like pages in a photo album, trying to place the last time I felt all – or any – of that. I don’t know what Gustavo expected me to say – we were both surprised when I said it – but my answer was, “I left my heart in 1987.”
Are the details important? Let’s just say that in 1987, I was in love with someone who loved me back just as much. Someone whom I’d thought was so out of my league, I was completely relaxed and myself around him. Turns out he had the same impression of me, and so we were happily surprised and grateful to fall in love. Oh, it had all the drama, longing and pathos of love. We got hurt some in the process, like lovers do. It didn’t end badly but sadly and bravely a year later when we realized it was time to go our separate ways. But the kicker of it all, and the reason I am writing this now is because it took Gustavo’s innocuous question to make me realize that I’d put a portion of my living on hold back when Bruce married Demi, Whitney wanted to dance with somebody, and Gary Hart’s monkey business on a boat sank his political career.
Since 1987 I’ve worked diligently on my career, then added parenting to the mix, while always making time for friends, extended family, community, travel, and evenings when a great meal was followed by a good movie. It’s been full. It’s been fun. But I essentially stopped taking risks in love when that man and I said our last longing goodbyes in a crowded subway station.
We all know we have a chronological age. We blow those candles out each year, adding another one every time. I’m in my middle years, and there are times when parts of my body feel every second of those years. It takes some yoga, some elliptical, some acupuncture and some massage to keep things supple and pliant and feeling fresh.
We know we have a psychological age when we can say someone is older than their years, or more or less mature than we expect them to be. Sometimes I find myself advising one of my younger colleagues on something that is news to them but seems second nature to me now. Those are the times I feel smooth, rich and potent as a fine, aged wine.
But we have an emotional age, too. And frankly, I’m surprised to know that I dropped off the vibrant, daring, womanly part of my affections several hundred miles and a couple of decades ago. How can I be a whole person in the here and now when I can’t remember really loving since God knows when? Now that I know where I left my heart, I think it’s high time I got it back.
