My Happy Heart

I was in the hospital last week for a procedure to help stop my heart from racing. Every so often it would take off and act like I was running a sprint or climbing twelve flights of stairs -- as if! This procedure is an amazing technological feat in which a laser-fitted wire is inserted through your groin into your heart and then the naughty nerves that are misfiring are zapped. And, if all goes according to the medical textbook, my heart starts taking it easier so I don't have to. So far, so good.

I have to think that decades of intense deadline pressure in the newspaper business followed by decades of intense pressure in the corporate world made my heart a little cranky, just like it did the rest of me. Like Howard Beale in the movie "Network," I think my cardiac chamber decided it was mad as hell and not going to take it any more. So it staged a protest and I don't blame it. Fortunately, the protest was short-lived.

Since I retired, my heart has been quite happy. It loves beating on Whidbey Island, where the air is clean and the climate is mild and everybody's nice as can be and only a few folks try to shove their disagreeable opinions down your throat. Washingtonians are an interesting breed. Quite progressive on political and economic issues and quite libertarian on social issues. An electrician who worked on our house wore a baseball cap that was embroidered with the words "Leave Me Alone," which sums up a lot of attitudes here. Having been away for more than 40 years, I had forgotten all that.

I left Washington in the late 1960s to find my fortune and figure out who I was. My wanderings took me to Vietnam, California and Texas, with sojourns in Japan, New York, Philadelphia, London, Paris, Venice and other fabulous spots. Now I'm back where I began. Hopefully wiser, definitely older, comfortable, but still feeling an urge for adventure.

When you hear your doctor tell you that you have a "heart ailment" that "needs attention," it does give you pause. And anytime you spend a day or two in a hospital, you get an in-your-face reminder of how fragile and temporary our physical lives are. "Start by admitting, from cradle to tomb, it isn't that long a stay," as the lyrics of the song "Cabaret" sum it up. The other thing that a diagnosis and heart ablation procedure do is make clear an irony of life: Just when you get pretty good at this job, your machine wears out.

I've never been afraid of what comes after all this. In fact, I await it with a journalist's curiosity and a believer's confidence. But, as I sit here on this beautiful morning looking out at Penn Cove while the clouds lift off Mount Baker in the distance, I'm especially enjoying the gentle beat of my heart.