The stove light casts a warm glow over the silverware that sits in the dish drainer by the sink. There’s a resounding Tink-Tink-Tink as my spoon bounces off the inside walls of my coffee mug. At 4:00am I try to keep the noise to a minimum out of kindness to my wife and kids. They don’t need to be up this early. My thumb gets hot and soon my fingertip is burning. I’ve mistakenly chosen an actual silver spoon as opposed to stainless steel. The free movement of electrons in silver is better than stainless steel, thus it conducts both heat and electric current better and faster. A normal stainless spoon would have taken longer to warm and perhaps never risen to same temperature at the finger end. I think about this as I get ready for work. I tend to analyze life and I think about a lot of things.

I place my cell phone in the small center console pocket of my car as I leave. There’s a wrist pin to an engine in the garage that I have to move aside. I’m working on a project for a friend. I run my fingertip over the hard tool steel and the industrial chrome plating. There is a visible polished wear mark in the middle of this pin, but it’s imperceptible to my fingertip. It is perhaps only 40 millionths of an inch deep. It’s visible and measurable on exotic equipment, but not something the human hand can feel. I wonder how many miles it took to make that impression. How long? I believe it occurred within a period of about five years. Not long in the lifespan of an engine, forever in the lifespan of a field mouse. Hard parts. Hard subjects.

Spotify was last left playing my daughter’s playlist. A song comes through my car stereo that was used in a fellow heart Warrior’s video. It makes me wonder how Jenn is doing today. I smile and I wonder if she knows how many people she made smile. If she’s like me she might have questioned if that was a silly thing to post right after she posted it. She needn’t have, but I always question if I posted something others think is foolish or silly. How many people are going to roll their eyes when they see another post from Craig? How many look forward to it?

I need the smile because I know the peaks and valleys of recovery from open heart surgery quite well. When you’re on top of a hill you feel great as you look down at where you’ve been, and yet there’s another ravine to cross and another ridge ahead with a higher peak. When you’re in the forest of the healing, the highs and lows of hills and valleys could not be further apart. As time passes you look back. Like looking down from an airplane over the Rockies, you see the hills and valleys and you appreciate the majestic mountains, but comparatively, it’s all small and distant. It’s hard to discern the highs and lows from 40,000 feet. Sometimes I read a heart patient’s post and it strikes me right back to the days of my recovery. It’s good, because it makes me appreciate where I am.

The miles click by on my odometer as the sun begins to break the horizon. I think about Jolene. She has surgery today. I wonder when she’ll post next. I wonder if she knows I’m waiting to see it, that we’re all waiting to see it. I wonder if Mel has gotten out of the house and started doing the things he loves. I haven’t seen Effie post anything in a while. She’s probably too busy. She is always busy. She never stops moving. I wonder how Noleta is doing. How is her mom? Chris is in California. Her weather has to be better than mine. I wonder how Pam is? Is everything still okay? I laugh at the thought of Joel, like me, running between dance and karate – and picking up after the dog. I thought about Justin as I mounted new front brake rotors. Jeff’s probably bench pressing an automobile or a small truck by now.

Back country roads give way to the highway. I romp the loud pedal on the right just to hear the music of my V8 at high rpm. I’m slingshotted onto the highway like I’ve been smacked in the tail by the sledgehammer of God. Roof open in the dark. Loud exhaust note. Life is good.

Linda seems to be healing well but has a lot of discomfort. Barbara is still new at this. Victoria has been quiet. Tara is dealing with difficulty and may have taken a step backward. I say a four lane-wide, 80 mph, blacktop prayer that they are healed somehow. I want them fixed because being broken sucks.

I wonder if my Hemi powered, dual exhaust prayers mean anything. If I’m wrong I’ve wasted a puff of breath and some thinking. If I’m right…

Maybe.

If you posted your story, I probably read it and therefore I thought about you. There’s a whole list of people that I haven’t even written about here that I’ve thought about. I’m a heart Warrior. I’m not consumed by it, but it is part of my life and it will never go away.

If you wonder if what you post matters, it does. People read it. I read it. When you post you’re going in for surgery I think about you that day and I wait for you to post again. Just so I know, just so WE know you’re back. When you go dark I wonder if you’re ok. I wait to read something. Anything. A joke, a question, success or complaint. I wait.

I hate writing that. I hate writing that because it sounds like I’m a stalker. I’m not. I’m just different. I didn’t ask for this, I was handed it. I can blame it on the heart lung machine, I can blame it on the surgery, but no one knows for sure and few understand. The truth is it doesn’t matter. I’m a heart patient and nothing will change that. I look at things differently now.

The hour has flown by and the sun has risen and most people are just waking up. I get ready to go into work and figure out a way to prove that a bore is perfectly straight or that an axle runs true, or that something is located exactly where it is supposed to be, so the images can be made that make people’s lives better. So that the next generation of CAT scan tool will be less expensive yet present better images, so that a baggage scanner can self-detect explosive material without the operator having to find it, so that DNA can be determined more rapidly with higher accuracy. I’m back to my regular world, but when the time is right, I’ll think of each of you again; folks I’ve never met who’s stories have touched me.

Hard parts. Hard subjects.

I’m a heart Warrior and so are you. We’re stuck in this. You matter, so battle strong because somebody out there is waiting to hear from you.