Seeking a cure for ‘heart fatigue'

The Boston Globe

“Heart fatigue.” That’s how I read it. But it was “Heat fatigue” a friend had written. On Facebook.

Her dog had been overheated so she soaked a bath towel with cold water from a hose and draped it over his back. “He seems to really like that,” she wrote, posting a picture of her dog at peace, eyes closed, ears up, sleeping the sleep of the untroubled.

I envied the dog. I looked at the towel and wished there were as simple a solution for heart fatigue.

Heart fatigue. Two words I would not have put together five months ago. But I know it now.

I watch my granddaughter Charlotte ride her bike with her friend Samantha. They stay 6 feet apart. They wear masks. These are the rules they live by. No school, no camp, no soccer, no sleepovers, no life as they knew it. But it’s just for now. They don’t watch the news. They don’t read the newspapers. They don’t think about what’s next. They’re OK. They’re kids.

But I’m not. I worry. I worry not just about the world as it is right now, but how it will be. How much worse it can get. How divided we are. Rest in a cool place. Drink cool fluids. Remove tight or heavy clothing. Sponge with cool water. Heat fatigue can be managed by doing these things. Heat fatigue is temporary. Is heart fatigue?

My son and his family have spent the last 100 plus days in their apartment in New York City. The last time we were all together was Christmas. Luke turned 11 in March. Euan turned 7. A few weeks ago, Megan turned 13. Next week I will see them all. Finally. But from 6 feet apart. We will talk, we will laugh, we will eat birthday cake. We will catch up. But no hugs.

No hugs? Who knew a person could long for a hug?

Euan asked on the phone last week if a beanstalk he planted here last year is still alive. I told him yes. I said that it had died in the winter but spilled seeds that had turned into a giant plant. A lie, yes, but I will find a bean plant and Euan will look at it and smile and it will be one less disappointment for a small boy whose entire world is nothing like it used to be.

Will a bean plant ease heart fatigue?

You have to stop watching the news, my family tells me. And you have to stop reading depressing books. That’s why you’re sad. They’re not depressing books, I tell them. They’re history. But they are not the history I learned in school. And they are definitely not a cool cloth on a hot day.

I think of the last line of a poem written by Edna St. Vincent Millay. “‘Tis not love’s going hurts my days, But that it went in little ways.” The poem is about a love affair that didn’t just up and end, a blowup and it’s over. It’s about a love that slowly eroded.

What’s been slowly eroding in this country for years is trust. Sins of omission. That’s what it’s called when parts of the truth are left out of the narrative. When you don’t get the whole story.

We have never been given the whole story. Not now. Not ever. We were raised on an edited version of history, all the bigotry and injustices excised or excused. What I’m learning now is the truth. And like COVID-19, the truth is a surprise that is deadly and frightening.

Many books and documentaries teach what our schools didn’t. “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” is only one. But it’s different because it was written for teens so it’s fast-paced. It has two authors, Ibram X. Kendi, who wrote the 600-plus word adult version and Jason Reynolds, who took the book and reduced it to 248 pages.

In the back of “Stamped” there are four pages of additional books that shed light on our shared history. I recommend also, “Geronimo’s Story of His Life,” told in his own words while the Apache leader and medicine man was imprisoned in Florida.

I’m hoping that the cure for heart fatigue is truth and knowledge. And that truth and knowledge will help to cure this country, too.

Beverly Beckham’s can be reached at bev@beverlybeckham.com.