Little Fire

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Posted by Boo , Sunday, March 28, 2010 6:20 PM

I actually typed out these words last night...

"How does a girl learn to be the kind of girl a man wants to hold hands with at Walmart?"

I typed them into an email, I entered my mercurial boyfriend's email address, and then I........

Clicked send.

Yes. Yes I did.

My daughter and I had been wandering Walmart, as we often do when I am simply out of ideas. It's relaxing, in a way, and I needed relaxing last night. But everywhere I looked were these couples, in the parking lot and in the aisles, holding hands. I watched one couple, fingers laced, just so simply connected. They let go for a moment as she readjusted her jacket, then their fingers found each other again, easily.

They seemed so secure with each other. So together. So safe. There was no fear or shame...or showing off, either. Just belonging.

I have never experienced such public ease with another human being in my life.

"What's wrong with me?" I complained to the universe, bitterly, "Why doesn't anyone want to hold my hand?"

I remember two times in more than two years that my mercurial bf has touched me like that on purpose. Once we were walking into a bar, and he put his hand on the small of my back to guide me gently through the maze of people. Once we were going into a restaurant, and he casually threw his arm around me as we fell into step.

Both times I thought my heart would burst with joy.

Maybe that's why he doesn't often do it? I have a feeling a joyful me is quite a lot of joy to behold. Maybe too much by half.

Carson McCullers wrote in 1940 that The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I'm not sure my heart hunts, so much. It waits. It hopes. It doesn't expect much. It doesn't ask for much. My heart is more like a Venus Flytrap.

When I was little, not much bigger than my daughter is now, we had these neighbors. They were nice enough people. Catskill folk. My dad used to go deer hunting with the son-in-law. They had a daughter, much older than I, but who rode the bus with me. I attached myself to her until she one day told me to go away. I get it. I was little and annoying and probably waaaay more clingy than your average next door neighbor.

Anyway, the daughter-with-a-husband babysat us sometimes, and the parents were in our lives, somehow, though I don't remember if they babysat or what they did, really.

I just remember that I liked to be at their house. I didn't like to be at home. One day I decided I wanted to eat dinner there. It was winter. Snow. Coat hat scarf mittens. I knocked on their door and asked to be invited for dinner. The mom said no. She closed the door.

I sat on their stairs and cried. I wailed, I think. I wanted to be in there in the warm with that family. I watched them move around in the artificial golden glow of family time on a winter night in Upstate New York and sobbed. I don't remember if she came to the door again, but I'm pretty sure I knocked several more times. I remember crying loudly until I was crying softly. I sat on their stairs with an icy face drenched in tears and snot. It was getting dark. The path home was through the trees. When the sobs subsided and the hiccups ceased, I went home. That's what I remember.

When I started thinking about this post, last night, it was going in a whole 'nother direction. I have been so lonely this weekend. Disconnected and lost. But my friend Tam had us over to color eggs. Just that little bit of normal life for my girl and me helped. It changed the course of my thinking from focused on the alone part. The fishing line in my brain began to angle for connections, instead. After all, I'm blessed in so many ways.

So, while I want to give that little lonely girl on the outside looking in a hug, dry her face, check that she's warm, tell her she's gonna be ok -- honest -- pat her bum and send her home, 'cause there really is no place else to go (I'd send her to the home I have now, if I could, but all I can really do is take good care of the daughter she will someday have, who is now safely asleep in the next room)...I can't let myself get lost in what she doesn't have but really wants and what I don't have and really want.

What I do have is pretty amazing. My eyes are on the wrong prize. My girl, my school, my sparkling circle of friends (sisters, really), even my mercurial bf whose gotten 8.7 billion odd emails from me over the years, and has almost never made me feel like the true nutcase that I am because of them.

Seriously, what am I whining about? I'm blessed.