Holes in Hearts

A man came up to me in the subway and stopped a few feet away, digging in his knapsack.

Instead of pulling out his wallet or a handful of coins, he pulled out several sheets of white paper and a pair of scissors.

"I have something for you!" he said excitedly.

I stopped playing to watch him fold the paper several times and cut them into a deliberate shape.

"These are holes-in-hearts," he told me. "I give them to people."

And sure enough, that's exactly what they were. After he had accomplished the basic heart shape, he cut a second heart away on the inside, creating heart-shaped paper donuts about three inches in diameter.

Pulling away the extra paper, he gave me a large stack of them.

"Thank you so much," I said, not sure what I was thanking him for exactly and wondering what to do next.

He had no such hesitation.

"This one is special," he said, folding up a large sheet of paper and starting to cut again, this time creating a snowflake design made of larger hearts and holes.

"Thank you," I said again. "You're doing a wonderful thing."

I wasn't just saying that to be nice. I felt sure it was true, I just wasn't sure why.

Was it simply the uniqueness of his act of generosity that was moving, or was it the symbolism of the gift?

These weren't simply hearts with random punctures in them (although those holes in hearts might have been meaningful as well).

No, these were whole hearts with parallel empty hearts in the centre. They represented a yin/yang: positive and negative space within one heart and within every heart, all parallel to each other and cut from the same cloth.

Was this what he meant?

I didn't dare ask him. I was afraid, I suppose, that he might talk to me too much about his hearts...that I might find myself connecting too long or too deeply during a chance encounter with a highly unusual stranger in a public place. (Was this the hole in my otherwise heartfelt "thank you"?)

He handed me the large, special heart-snowflake, smiled gaily and headed off to catch a train.

I stashed the cut-outs in my knapsack. The large snowflake is still there, folded up for safekeeping.

But somehow the little holes-in-hearts got loose around our house. For days afterward we were finding them everywhere, scattered on the floor and on cabinets.

Dave and the kids asked, "What are these? Where did they come from?"

I haven't known how to answer.