PROXIMITY OF THE HEART
We were pioneers. The ones who loaded our belongings into the 65 Bel Air wagon and headed across the plains.
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Eight-hundred miles from Chicago to Dallas, I don’t once remember grieving the losses of where we’d left, only the presence of tiny butterflies of anticipation that have perpetually visited this nomadic life that I lead.
This week during a conversation with new friends about finding our people, I realized that I have been the new girl for as long as I can remember—
To be the daughter of Jackie and Jim was to be both pioneer and settler, packing and unpacking with equal amounts of enthusiasm and finesse.
I reflect proudly that our little family made home of places once distant and foreign, moving into other people’s lives with ease.
Packing. Unpacking. These are the brown cardboard legacies of a childhood as changeable as the coming and going of Fall and Winter, Summer and Spring.
I became adept at compartmentalizing both feelings and friendships as something to be prudently unwrapped, delicate…and temporal. And I became expert noticer of every little detail.
What we become when entering into what exists is “observer.”
I viewed my surroundings as one would a painting hung on the wall, drawn and detached, beautiful but not in a way that had much to do with me. And I became masterful at noticing each nuance, careful to revere what was without disrupting it to noticeable degrees.
With subsequent moves [and there were many] I began to understand that if I was to cultivate friendships, I best get to it. My life’s biggest lesson: There really is no time to waste. Followed by the second: The mandate for authenticity that over-rides all other traits.
Mine is the long, life lesson of loving and leaving, of conversations sugared with the intensity of knowing that the sweetest of moments don’t last.
Proximity has been my rare indulgence, like mounds of whipped cream over rich chocolate cake.
What extraordinary epiphany to possess as a child—that love is not defined by physical parameters but by two spirits intertwined.
Sometimes the ones closest are the ones farthest away. This has been proved out in my life more times than I can say.
Our station wagon, was packed to the brim with invisible friends who took up very little space. I didn’t need to see or touch them to sense they were there.
My life, the whole of it, has been a nomadic one, though the vehicles [from station wagon to Jeep] have changed. And that wise little girl has been my constant and relaible guide along the way.
She reminds me that new places are more breathtaking when we are willing to quietly observe rather than infiltrate. And she admonishes that only a select few will ultimately become true friends.
With every leaving I remember peering out the window, down the charming tree-lined streets. And I can feel, even now, the tears rolling down my cheeks.
Grief is physical act of the spirit. Visceral. A missing. Each tear a surrendering of a part of ourselves.
I wonder about the other side of that equation, not only what went with me but how much of myself I left behind. I hope the important ones remember. And I hope somewhere in quiet interior corridors I still linger in the proximity of the heart.
NOTES [thoughts on proximity]
If you find the Search Box on the Journal home page and type in, “My People” you will notice that I have thought a great deal about belonging—who I love, who are mine.
One of the most compelling reasons I began writing this Journal was to share my heart with those I know intimately, and those I’ve never met. The words reach beyond the neighborhood or village to meet you where you live. And that life purpose makes me content in all things.
No matter if the proximity is down the street or on the web, it takes time to find your people—Trust and intimacy cannot be forced.
My people are rarely just like me—they teach me things I wouldn’t have otherwise noticed or thought.
I think it’s important to be clear about what you need in a friendship. More, it’s essential to be aware of what you have within you to give.
Sometimes long distant friendships are the closest of all—many of you demonstrated this through my cancer…
in writing heartfelt letters of encouragement, sending simple, “I love you” texts,
and taking the time for drawn-out phone calls.
This is what I want to say more than anything—Don’t take time together for granted. You never know which conversation will be your last.
IMAGE: This is me at five years old in our home in Dallas, just after the first of many moves. It’s one of the few images of my mama and me together—Janene Marie and Jacqueline Blanche. Seeing this now, I crave her as the night craves the day. She was the most beautiful woman I knew, as much on the inside as what you see here. And she had this way about her that made fast friends of perfect strangers. She wrote annual Christmas cards to nearly three hundred families she collected along our journeys, right up to a month before she passed away. It could be said without question that Jacqueline was the perfecter of Proximity of the Heart.