Ars Poetica: Aww
When the world makes us vulnerable … it opens us up to the world again.
– Ada Limon, “Modern Love Podcast,” New York Times
1.
You love coming to the dentist, says my dentist with his fingers in my mouth. After I rinse, I smile and say no, I just like you! He asks me about my Passover and I tell him my parents were away for the first time in my entire life, so I went to a Seder at my best friend’s on Long Island. He asks me where, I tell him, and then he pats me on the back of my shoulder saying, good girl. That’s far! Your parents must be proud. I laugh and he says, you know, that’s what I like about you, you’re never a phony. You’re always yourself. So full of heart. People must love that about you, and in my head I am already writing this poem.
2.
How can I be anyone but myself? This is the world where I feel. This, my mind, this, my body, and this my heart. What isn’t about heart? When we watch the documentary Billy and Molly: an otter love story, in my tenth grade English class, kids laugh at Billy, but I know they’re just afraid to be vulnerable. They laugh at his red face and his bad teeth saying, he’s a ten, but he’s in love with an otter, and I laugh, then I tell them to knock it off and watch the movie. A minute later, they are marveling at Molly and her dog-like belly rubs, the way she takes walks in the morning with Billy and his dog Jade, the way she comes to the house he built for her to have her otter cub. I don’t know who’s happier — Molly or Billy, or me — but the joy is there. I watch the wonder on the faces of my students as they try to label what exactly this relationship is, but not everything has a label, needs a label. Some things are beyond our ken.
It’s not romantic, they say. No, it’s not, I answer, it’s almost spiritual, other-worldly, but they don’t respond. They bring up his teeth again when Billy watches the webcam and smiles so big at the otter cub playing with Molly, and I respond, yeah, but look at that great big heart of his. Look at all that love he has to give. Just look at it!
3.
Looking at what you love is an art, and I love a big heart. After years of dating men, or attempting to date men who could not love me back, I hungered for that openness, that willingness to open wide and give, and well, love. It’s what I look for in the world. Everything is about heart — the absence of it, the revival of it, the drive of it, the silence of it. It’s what connects us one thread at a time, the over-under of our days, the one long stitch.
4.
When my partner asks me what my No. 1 thing to do is for our trip to DC, I say, the new pandas at the Smithsonian Zoo, and he laughs. There’s nothing like a baby panda. There is so much to see: their eyes, their paws, and bellies, but what really got me was their fluff, that softness of the pandas, yes, but really, of the people in line. There is so much turmoil in the world, so much war, tyranny, and hate, but there I stand in a group of hearts-aligned waiting for a look from those big black eyes. That collective aww is a light source, an invitation, a courtship between hand and hand, and heart and heart, a vulnerable moment where all the walls are down. That softness, that aww, that’s the heart I take home with me, that despite uncertainty and anger, there is love and gentleness, too, in a neighbor, in a stranger, in you.