A Quote That Taught Me How to Connect to My Heart Again
A father’s advice to his daughter, the poet Grace Paley, about how to grow old
These words by the poet Grace Paley keep tapping me on the shoulder. They are about a morning ritual, a quiet whisper from within, and a precious gift from an elderly father to his daughter.
In her 2002 New Yorker piece, My Father Addresses Me on the Facts of Old Age, which is included in the book Here and Somewhere Else, Paley, then eighty years old, explores her aging.
Most mornings now, I find myself in that quiet space before the world wakes up, just thinking about her father’s words to her. It’s my invitation, a chance to have a heart-to-heart with myself.
Recently, I had a heart sonogram at the hospital. Watching that grainy image on the screen, that little flicker — my own heartbeat? A strange sadness washed over me. It didn’t quite feel like “mine” somehow.
Then, there was the technician’s explanation. There’s the mechanics of the heart, the muscles relaxing, the blood flowing in and out — a mechanical pump keeping this whole show running.
Songs have been written about hearts for centuries, but there’s another kind of pressure on mine.
