In the Shape of a Heart

Photo by: Edgar A. Morales

I consider myself a very fortunate individual. Even though I am not swimming in money I have, in one way or another, obtained everything I really wanted. Sometimes I worked for those things, and others they were just given to me. 

 

I am grateful for all.

But there is one present in particular that meant a lot to me, actually there are two, and they were given to me by the same person at two different times in our relationship. To be able to know what those presents meant you would have to know the context in which they were given, but this time around I’ll only tell you about the first one.

You would have to know that I fell in love with her long before I got those presents, and that I was certain that she loved me back. I am not going to go into too many details, but I’ll tell you that our relationship has been one of steady growth.

We went out on a picnic once. It was but a couple of months into our courtship, and we were getting along famously. I had actually been looking forward to this day because she said we were going to a place she enjoys very much.

She made a prosciutto, mozzarella, sun-dried tomato and garlic sandwich that was absolutely delicious (even accounting for the excessive garlic) and come to think of it, I hope she makes me another one those soon (hint). We accompanied that with a merlot and headed for the beach.

She loves the beach. She can spend hours upon hours contemplating the sea, thinking and admiring its beauty. There is a spot somewhere in Baja, five miles away from Rosarito, behind an old beach house that has a bench facing the ocean. It’s like a balcony with some loose stones underneath and the beach right after. When the tide is high enough it reaches the rocks beneath the balcony.

We sat there and had our picnic. We spoke. We laughed. We contemplated the sky and tried to make sense of the different shapes in the clouds. We saw the ocean and some lights out in the sea, I thought they were boats, but she said they were tiny bonfires in the middle of the nothingness, and I believed her. We saw the sunset too.

We went back home and when I was dropping her off she went inside her house and asked me to wait for her in the driveway. When she came back, she asked me to close my eyes and extend my hands. She placed something in them and when I opened them I saw a rock in the shape of a heart.

She loves to walk on the beach and collect rocks that look like hearts. They are not easy to find, believe me I have tried. She said she found that one just a few days earlier walking in the beach. She said that when she found it she was thinking about me. And now I was holding it in my hands.

I don’t know if that was her heart that she was giving me to care for, or if it was my own heart that she had found after all these years. Nowadays, I like to think that it is a combination of the two.