Sharing Heart– At Principle Gallery
My father had decided to teach me how to grow old. I said O.K. My children didn’t think it was such a great idea. If I knew how, they thought, I might do so too easily. No, no, I said, it’s for later, years from now. And besides, if I get it right it might be helpful to you kids in time to come.
They said, Really?
My father wanted to begin as soon as possible.
[…]
Please sit down, he said. Be patient. The main thing is this — when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.
That’s a metaphor, right?
Metaphor? No, no, you can do this. In the morning, do a few little exercises for the joints, not too much. Then put your hands like a cup over and under the heart. Under the breast. He said tactfully. It’s probably easier for a man. Then talk softly, don’t yell. Under your ribs, push a little. When you wake up, you must do this massage. I mean pat, stroke a little, don’t be ashamed. Very likely no one will be watching. Then you must talk to your heart.
Talk? What?
Say anything, but be respectful. Say — maybe say, Heart, little heart, beat softly but never forget your job, the blood. You can whisper also, Remember, remember.
–Grace Paley, My Father Addresses Me on the Facts of Old Age (2002)
Crossing the path through the woods to the studio I was already beginning to think of what I could write for this blog. I got up late, so in my mind I was rushing. Late is a relative term for me. It was 5 AM before I stepped out into the darkness to head to the studio this morning, already starting to fret that time was flying away.
I’m living with a weird time cycle now that would have been unthinkable years ago, rising in what some would consider the middle of the night and sometimes falling asleep before what most people would consider dinner time. I feel this insane need to write something, knock back a couple of cups of coffee, and do at least a 30-minute workout before heading home for breakfast so any loss of time puts my fragile mind into panic mode.
I digress.
Coming into the studio, after taking care of the studio cats and putting on the coffee, I am remembering that I have some half-written posts waiting to be used. Not even half-written, just snippets and passages from other people that I have come across that interested me. Some pertain to art, some don’t. They just need to be filled out and given a rough polish before I hit the publish button. I say rough polish because that is all I have time for even on my regular schedule.
It often shows. Again, I digress.
It was this passage at the top from the late writer Grace Paley that was freshest in my mind. It was from a story she wrote at age 80 for the New Yorker in 2002. My Father Addresses Me on the Facts of Old Age was about an experience years before with where her father was trying to instruct on how to grow old.
Her father was Jewish and had been born in 1880’s in Ukraine while it was still Czarist Russia. He and Paley’s mother (also Jewish and Ukrainian) came to the USA in the first decade of the 1900’s. He learned English by reading Dickens and eventually trained and became a doctor.
Her father is also the subject of another piece, A Conversation with My Father, that is a wonderful short piece about him, at age 86 and ailing, wanting her to write a real short story for him. It has the kind of back and forth that one would expect between an old father and a loving child trying to please him while still trying to not be something they are not.
I think I got that right, but who knows anything at 6:30 in the morning?
I now notice that I have spent too much time on background info. The clock is racing against the schedule that is concreted into my brain and winning. I am starting to panic, trying to figure out how I can wrap this up without it seeming like a hairball that one of my cats just hocked up on the floor.
I then come back to what it was that attracted me to this passage from Grace Paley in the first place. It was this idea of taking the time to gently rub your heart. To put your hand on it and speak gently to it, to ask it to continue to work. To ask it to remember those times before when it worked so hard for you and to let it know how much you care for and appreciate its efforts.
The idea of an old man telling his grown child this lovely thought has a beautiful intrinsic naivete that I found touching when I first encountered it. And as the clocks furiously away, I find it even more so as it calms my own heart a bit. Makes me appreciate all the hard work my heart has done on my behalf. Makes me want to give it a break for this moment, to let it relax and enjoy the moment with me.
I find myself whispering, Remember, remember…
I am not yet an old man– though I am well on the way to it– I find myself being a little embarrassed by this. But in the end, I don’t care if it seems foolish or naive. It’s my heart and I will do what I will with it.
You take care of your own heart.
Mission accomplished for this morning. Now time’s a-wasting and I have things to do. You better get out of here before I actually become an old angry old man shaking my fist at you, demanding you stay off my lawn.
I swear I’ll do it. Now, git…
Redtree Times 
I may have mentioned this before, simply because I’m so astonished by the realization. Now that we’re in 2026, this born-in-1946 kid is heading toward an eightieth birthday. It seems so improbable that all I could do was laugh when I realized it. But it makes this post even more poignant; it’s a good reminder that whatever time we have left, the time comes when our years are limited, even for the healthiest among us. In twenty years, I’ll no doubt be gone. I started my business thirty-two years ago. Oh, yikes! That puts things in perspective!
The years do sneak upon you, don’t they? I have no problem with aging so far, often forgetting my body’s age except on those days when, as Leonard Cohen sings, I ache in the places where I used to play.