I am watching a movie on the flight home. I cannot remember the name nor the actors. I think it was a sad movie. I hope so because I know I felt tears pricking at the edges of my eyelids.

And I think perhaps it is the bittersweetness of leaving Huatulco and the joy of coming home.

My heart is heavy. My heart is full.

It is both the blessing and the curse of travelling. Everyday new sights, sounds, ideas, foods, people open up like an oyster to reveal the exquisite beauty of every day pearls. And everyday, it takes you away from those you love, the places you know, the comforts of the life you live day to day.

And it comes back to me, the name of the movie I watched. In Her Shoes. Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley McLean. Two sisters who find the grandmother they thought had forgotten them and discover the beauty of the ties that bind them can never be broken. No matter what happens in the world around them, they are always connected through the heart to one another.

It is the heart connection that stirs my memory of the movie’s name because in it, Cameron Diaz recites one of my favourite  e.e. cummings poems.

i carry your heart

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

This morning, as I gaze at the snowy landscape outside my office window, as I feel the chill of the air when I let Beaumont out for a romp in the backyard, as I make coffee to take back to bed to savour with my beloved so we can lie together and reminisce of the days just past, of our plans for today and dreams for tomorrow, I carry with me in everything I do, the memories of Huatulco and Villas Fa-Sol. Of Don Gabriel and his coffee in Pluma Hildalgo. Of dinner under the palm trees, the roaring of the surf crashing against the rocks. Of the guitar player serenading us at dinner, the music of the looms at Textileartes. The sound of the birds cawing as we travelled across the waves to a deserted beach where I swam to shore. Of the taxi drivers, the servers, the shop people, the delightful staff at Villas Fa-Sol. Everyone. I carry them in my heart. The people. The sites. The adventures. The music. The laughter. The friendships made. The friendships deepened.

They will live in my heart forever for the heart is an infinite space. It gathers memories and holds them near, filling our soul’s longing for connection with its reminders of the people we treasure most, the one’s we hold so dear. And though the colours of the photos may dim, and the memory of the beauty of the sunsets become lost in other places, other journeys, the memory of the people will stay with me forever.

For that is the way of the heart. It holds onto people, no matter where in the world we go. For with every beat of our heart, it reminds us that we are never far from the one’s we love. We carry their hearts in ours. Always.