How Much the Heart Can Hold

It was one of those "I love my life" moments, visiting friends who live tucked away on a parcel of Gaviota land invisible from the highway. Getting there involved an easy-to-miss turnoff, unlatching a gate, and being met at the bottom of a hill and then driven up a bumpy dirt road with an impressive little creek crossing. Shelters included a cozy yurt set among ancient oak trees and adjacent to delightfully unkempt gardens of foxgloves and hollyhock, blue lobelia, various herbs and succulents, and the earth's most fragrant sweet peas. There were fig trees and thickets of boysenberries started from Lori's grandmother's cuttings, and a short stroll away...through a meadow of wild oat and purple needle grass, past a small citrus grove and mulberry trees and rows of vegetables ...Michael's famous dragon fruit, lovingly tended in a warm protected space, and whose blossoms he hand-pollinates by moonlight.

Dogs romped. Strings of mirrors dangled from a roof overhang and glinted in the waning light. Michael lit a fire in an old propane can artfully transformed into an outdoor fireplace and we sat around it campfire style, talking the way friends talk when they really talk.

We shared stories about people we looked up to and places we've been, of choices we face or have faced and what matters most. We were ages 30 to 60+, but the questions were often the same ones, and the truths and touchstones constant.Lori mentioned the poetry reading we had recently attended and mused about the way poetry can connect to us and connect us to each other. She talked about how good it felt to hear someone give voice to emotions and experiences we all recognized but lacked the gift of articulating.

"It gave me that feeling...like...how much can a heart contain?" she asked, paraphrasing something from Dan Gerber.

And we knew the answer: very much.