Feeling Inside Out

We took our kids to see Inside Out on Father's day.  It seemed like a great family activity, and a way to celebrate the Daddy who does so much for us.  We are all happiest, it seems, at the movie theater.  With popcorn and sugary drinks, with bags of Skittles passed down the row, with the lights dimmed and the magic of Tinseltown at work in front of us.  I was excited, of course, because Pixar movies never disappoint, with their tight stories, gorgeous animation, and that amazing ability to delight both children and their parents.  But I was also feeling nervous.  I had done a little research the week before, listening to the director, Pete Docter, on Fresh Air with Terri Gross.  It was fascinating to hear how the film's writers and animators had worked out the story, learned about the functions of the brain, and chosen the actors to voice the characters.  There was a key element to the movie that I knew would hit a little too close to home, though.  The movie shows the emotional life of Riley, an 11year old girl who has just moved across the country with her parents.  Pete Docter shared that this was chosen as the catalyst for the Emotions to get out of whack because his family had moved when he was 11.  But it's more than Riley's story and Pete Docter's story; it is also my story.

When I was 11, just finishing the fifth grade, my parents decided to move from my hometown of Dallas, Texas to Ohio.  In fact, I missed the last day of school to help load our Ryder moving truck, and we spent the night as a family at motel near the highway in order to get an early start in the morning and try to miss the Dallas rush hour.  I even lost my last baby tooth during our move.  In Texas, I was a basketball player, a native well-versed in the state's history, a Cowboys fan, occasionally too loud, occasionally too aggressive.  I loved school and my teachers, I knew every inch of my neighborhood, from the well-worn paths where my sister and I rode our bikes to the cavernous stormwater pipes that ran under our street.  I had friends and I was confident.  And then we moved, and much of that changed.

It wasn't until I watched Inside Out this past summer that I could finally articulate what that move was like for me.  There it was, playing out on the giant screen, the way everything around changes while everything inside is changing too.  For me, growing up felt like a severing of myself.  Childhood was in Texas and adolescence was in Ohio.  I imagine that people who don't move in the middle of their young lives probably have a stronger feeling of integration, that the places where you have your first kiss or your first job are the same places where you used to play with your friends or shop with your parents.  Just like Riley, I struggled to fit in at my new school, to be excited about the changes in my life.  And just like Riley, I lost pieces of myself along the way.  The friends I left behind disappeared like Bing Bong in the Memory Dump.  Basketball was different, and within a few years I switched from being an athlete to being a band geek.  I lost some of that confidence too, the feeling of belonging, of being home.  It took many years, and a few more moves, for me to find that again.

Then there is the final lesson of Inside Out, the realization that all of one's feelings have merit and purpose, and that Sadness is necessary to move forward.  It felt like I was sad for a full year, overwhelmed and confused and struggling.  I longed to go back, to return to the Lone Star state and my real life.  But that wasn't happening.  Yet it was in that sad state that a new self was born.  I became the sapling of the woman I am today, sarcastic and pensive and loyal and silly.  I made new friends, developed new hobbies, found new places to ride my bike and new ways to express myself.  It wasn't easy, but probably no one feels like it is easy to get older.  And it created something special inside me, a sense of compassion and tenderness towards girls entering 6th grade and experiencing all those changes.

It's amazing how it all works out, isn't it?  How the places where you feel the most pain and challenge become the places where you are most able to help others, how the worst times lead to the best times.    And how home turns out not to be the place you left, but the place where you arrive.

My Thoughts on Men

"Consider the target: women in their greater physical

weakness and emotional sensitivity are the target

for cruel and arbitrary assault.  The dishonor of women

runs like a dark polluted stream through history,

and all women have in some way been impacted

by it.  Misogyny is a universal blemish

on the face of woman."   -Andrew Comiskey

When I look around at the world, all the problems we face today seem to boil down to one source: men.  Think about it.  Men are ISIS, men are Al Qaeda, men are Boko Haram, men are warlords.  Men are in seats of power all over the world, arguing with each other over who has the bigger throne. Men are the oppressors of women, children, and minority groups under the guise of religion, law, and brute force.  It's hard to imagine women inventing prostitution, racism, fast food, or sweat shops.  War and all its various horrors are clearly the handiwork of men, since it is men determining when a country invades or attacks another, men who lead troops of other men to the front lines, men who created and deploy bombs, drones, and artillery. (Just in case you think I have pink blinders on, yes, women also fight.  But we like to do our damage in close range, so we can see the hurt we inflict and watch the life drain from the eyes of our enemies.  We're satisfied with sharp spears, even if they only take shape in our words.)

Not to mention, men, how you make your families vulnerable when you abandon them, leaving women to serve as both mom and dad to the children you create but refuse to raise.  Single mothers are working to sustain the family and also totally responsible for the emotional nurture of their kids.  All of that is too much for one person.  So young women grow up never knowing love and affirmation from their fathers and seek out replacements in the form of abusers and takers.  Not to mention that the young men who are drawn to fundamentalist hate groups grow up in homes without fathers.

And so I stand in judgement, blaming men for all these problems and more, but still I hold a candle of hope.  Because what stands between me and my burning hatred for the world's injustices are five guys offering a glimpse of what men are supposed to be.  I am fortunate to be surrounded by men who love me well, who uphold the often forgotten practices of fidelity and service, who embrace the strengths of masculinity without exhibiting the flaws of their gender.

I grew up in a home with both my mom and my dad, and my dad has always told me that I can do anything.  He took me to the library and let me get any books I wanted (I was at the library with my kids recently and overheard a dad tell his daughter to just get one book...I wanted to inform him that they are free and shouldn't be limited, but I held my tongue).  He taught me to play basketball and explained the rules of football as we watched games together.  He told me I was beautiful, even when the mirror seemed to contradict him.

Because of how I was raised and the kind of man my dad was, when I became an adult and looked for a partner in life, I found a man very similar in Chris.  He appreciated and loved me from the start, not perfectly (for there is only One who loves me perfectly, and I'm still trying to wrap my mind around who He is) but well.  I knew that he would be the kind of father I wanted my kids to have, and I believed he would be a husband who would honor and cherish me for the rest of his life.  So far, I haven't been wrong.

Together, we created two lives.  How I desired for those children to be girls, to raise them to be fierce, awesome women who don't take crap from anyone, pursuing truth and justice.  But God in His infinite wisdom gave me sons.  Even when we stepped outside our gene pool, still a boy was the one we got.  So instead of raising warrior daughters and feeding them misandry along with my breastmilk, I am becoming tenderized daily to the beauty of my boys.  I love them, not in spite of the stink of their farts or the messes they make, but because of them.  I am learning to take delight in their feats of strength and enormous appetites, their stubbornness and their desire to lead.  (Even the three year old the other day demanded that I follow him, instead of the other way around.)  I feel so strongly the duty I have to these boys, to show them what a woman is.  She is strong (as I chop down trees and move furniture).  She is soft (as I cuddle their growing bodies and give comfort to their boo boos).  She is smart (as I help with homework and teach them new things).  She is brave (as I kill spiders and engage in plastic sword fights).  She is loving and worthy of love (as we live this life together, taking care of each other).  And oh, I can see the men these boys will grow into.  I can see them taking jobs as teachers and police officers, helpers and public servants.  I can see them falling in love with strong, courageous women and creating families of their own.  I can see them doing the hard work of love (because if they don't, if they try to bail, their father and I will drag them back home no matter what).

And so my candle of hope burns into the night.  What if the tide is turning?  What if men and women together could bring healing to this earth, if we could set things right?  What if our men stood in their rightful places as protectors and providers instead of being pimps and power-hungry?  What if we loved so boldly that we fought back against terror and injustice?  What if all our children grew up in families where fathers were present and active, because they didn't bail, because they didn't die in an unjust war, because they knew what really mattered in life?  If we could do this, then we could all live free, men and women together.

Thanks to my guys, for being the persistent flame on my candle.

For Better or Worse

I recently found a copy of my wedding vows while cleaning our bookshelf.  We didn't want to use the traditional vows, vows I recently learned were written by Thomas Cranmer in 1549.  So we spent an afternoon looking through marriage books until we discovered words that fit the marriage we wanted to have.  And we pledged:

I take you to be my spouse, and these things I promise you...

I will be faithful to you and honest with you; 

I will respect, trust, help, and care for you;

I will share my life with you; 

I will forgive you as we have been forgiven;

And I will try with you to better understand ourselves, the world, and God;

Through the best and worst of what is to come as long as we live.

I like the vows we chose, maybe even more now than the day we first read them huddled together at a table in the bookstore.  At the time, it sounded like the kind of marriage I wanted to have, a life that was shared, open minds exploring the world together, with honesty, respect, and trust as the foundation.  But I didn't really know how to live the vows, or how much they would be put to the test.

I didn't know what the best would be, that in marriage the best is the absolute BEST that life has to offer.  I didn't know what it would be like inside that union of two lives.  When marriage is good, it surpasses anything else in the world.  It is better than hot fudge sundaes, better than blue skies and warm sunshine, better than sleeping in.  We all desire to be known in this life, and when my husband looks at me and tells me exactly what I'm thinking, when he correctly identifies my mood, that deepest desire is met.  He gets me!  When we are sitting across the table, delicious food between us, and my belly aches from laughing so hard, but he just keeps going, I have found a joy that goes beyond happiness.  When we find each other and our limbs are entwined and the world around us falls away, I am delighted that we fit together in this perfect, beautiful way.  And when that union creates a life inside me, when my body stretches and grows and he is there every day, wiping my tears and holding my hair and procuring the very food that my body is craving, I am cared for.  Suddenly this little life lies between us, a life we created out of our love, and feeling the warm weight of our child on my chest as I look into the eyes of my husband is the very best of what can come.  These moments come again and again over the years, the wonder and the laughter and the connection and the acknowledgement that we created that.  On my wedding day, I had no idea that these were the bests that were to come.

I was also unprepared for the worsts.  Because when marriage gets bad, it is the absolute WORST that life has to offer.  Once we pronounce our vows and triumphantly exit the church, everything in our lives is now in the hands of another person.  And each of us is imperfect.  The reason this vow exists in the first place is to recognize that something bad will happen.  The person who knows you best will hurt you worst.  The fears and insecurities you reveal can be used against you.  The shortcomings and blind spots you aren't even aware of will be exposed.  The person who shares your home and your bed and your bank account will be selfish.  It will hurt more than anything, more than surgery, more than death, more than a friend's betrayal.  It will break your heart.  You will read through your vows and it will make you cry, because in the worst they can't protect you from each other.  Hurt and angry, you will realize that the hardest one to keep is the pledge to forgive.  Because you have been forgiven freely and instantly, but your heart has grasped your spouse's crimes and refuses to let them go.  For all that lies broken between you, you will wonder if it is time to make the final break, the one from which there is no return.  Because if we exult in the best of times, how can we bail in the worst of them?

Mostly what I have learned is that marriage is often a mix of the two, like the chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream that my son always requests.  Each bite contains some best times and some worst times.  One of my best and favorite memories is the day we spent in Gettysburg, at the Civil War Museum.  But we were only there because our car had broken down during our trip to Eastern Pennsylvania, and we had to stay an extra day while it was repaired.  Another stand out is the day we thought Michael would leave our family, and in our anguish we held each other all night.  Our hearts and minds were one in our grief.  When I was pregnant with Winston, Chris was making me laugh so hard that I started crying.  But then suddenly I was crying, tears flowing, loud sobs crying.  He was stricken and desperate to know what went wrong, and I was frustrated because nothing was actually wrong except my hormones had swung out of control.  We have experienced moments of doubt and triumph, of anger and love, we have lived through successes and failures.  We have broken our vows and we have upheld our vows.  We have climbed the highest mountains and we have stumbled through the lowest valleys.

As far as I can tell, that's a marriage.  It is fun and it is hard.  It is challenging and it is peaceful.  It is satisfying and it is disappointing.  It is the best and it is the worst.  It is ours.

Leaving Home: Part 2 #atlasgirl blog tour post

This post is part of the Atlas Girl Blog Tour which I am delighted to be a part of along with hundreds of inspiring bloggers. To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE!   This is the second part of my post about leaving, and ultimately finding, home. 

What image comes into your mind when you hear the word "wanderlust"?  Do you see a woman on a mountaintop, arms outstretched, wind whipping her hair?  Or maybe exotic locations, waterfalls and ancient temples, a road less traveled?  When I was 21, hopping all over North America as a flight attendant, I would belt out the lyrics to Sara Evans "Born to Fly".  I had the Wanderlust, and I was not alone.  Most of my co-workers lived as nomads.  We had our base city, bare apartments shared with several other people called "crash pads", friends and family that we visited on our days off, but nowhere we called home.  Ever since my family had left Texas, home hadn't been the place where I lived.  So I was searching for it in every city I visited.  In August 2003, I lost a friend.  A roommate.  A fellow flight attendant.  It rocked my world.  I wasn't sure what I believed or who I was, but as I emerged from the haze of grief, I realized that the rest of my life could be a few more weeks or 75 more years.  What was I waiting for?  Finally, I planned a trip that was sure to cure my wanderlust:  I was heading to Paris.  I pictured myself at the Eiffel Tower, eating crepes and wearing fabulous jeans and finally pulling off red lipstick, visiting art museums and in general being the best version of myself.

Somehow in the months to come, my European adventure included my mother.  For me, it was the realization of an adolescent dream, a first step to the life I was meant to live.  I don't know what it was for her. (A week before we left, she asked, with a crinkle in her nose, "Now what is there to do in Paris?"  I gave her an exasperated look and began, "Well the Louvre for one..." and she interrupted, "OOO, yes!  Can we go for a gondola ride on the Louvre?"  I couldn't even begin to explain everything that was wrong with that sentence.)  We flew in to Spain, took another short flight to Frankfurt, where we stayed with friends (Germany in a nutshell:  terrified by the Autobahn, entranced by the medieval castles, loved the cake in the Black Forest, sampled blood sausage).  And then....we boarded a train for Paris.

I felt euphoric as we hurtled toward the City of Lights, my nose pressed against the glass.  We found a cute little hotel run by a married couple (who made cafe au lait and baguettes for breakfast), ate some dinner at a nearby restaurant, only had 3 fights between the train station and our shared bed, and I fell asleep to the noises of the city.  In the morning, I was ready for Paris to sweep me off my feet.  My mom and I walked all day.  We saw a brasserie, a bucherie, a pharmacie.  The Arc de Triomphe.  The Louvre.  The Champs Elysee.  We bought chic clothes.  At twilight on my mother's 45th birthday, we dined at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.  And I fell asleep disappointed.  Because there was also the endless claxoning of emergency vehicles.  The overwhelming smell of Armpit on the Underground.  The aggressive Asian tourists.  And my mom was the only familiar sight.

When people asked, "How was Paris?", their eyes alight, waiting breathlessly for some tale of adventure, all I could say was, "It wasn't what I thought it'd be."  In all my planning, I'd forgotten a very powerful force.  Like Lord Voldemort, I had underestimated LOVE.  Going to Paris was the most important thing to me....even more important than the ring I was wearing on my left hand.  You see, all through school and flying, I'd also been falling in love.  I kept returning to Ohio for him, once a week, every other week (3 weeks apart only twice, and how those weeks dragged).  A month before my trip, he'd placed the ring on my finger and asked for my hand, but he hadn't factored into my plans.  Each day I had struggled with European pay phones and walked away frustrated, unable to connect across the time zones.  I just wanted to hear his voice.  And, while it didn't have the outcome I thought it would, my journey across the ocean did help me realize where my home was.  It was in his arms.

I started to resent Ohio a little less as we settled there, not far from the place where I'd felt like a Texas girl in an Ohio world.  In 2007, I gave birth to my beautiful baby James and we bought a house with a big yard and rooms for the other children I suddenly wanted.  And it's through the eyes of my boys that I see and appreciate what makes Ohio our home.  Jumping into a pile of multi-hued leaves.  The many, many uses for snow (snowballs, snowmen, snow cream).  The excitement when football seasons starts, though I'll never forsake my Dallas Cowboys.  And the church downtown that welcomes us, loves us, teaches me the truest meaning of family.

Chris asked me recently if I still wanted to move away, and I was finally able to answer NO.  My need to feel significant isn't defined by a place, it's filled in the arms of the people I love.  It doesn't matter where we lay our heads, as long as we lay together.

Emily T. Wierenga, award-winning journalist and author of 4 books, has released her first memoir, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look. They say the book is like “Girl Meets God” meets “Wild” meets “Eat, Pray, Love.” I say the book is inspiring. You can grab a copy here.

Leaving Home: Part 1, a #atlasgirl blog tour post

This post is part of the Atlas Girl Blog Tour which I am delighted to be a part of along with hundreds of inspiring bloggers. To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! 

Have you seen these ads on Facebook that try to get you to buy custom t-shirts?  Ones that say "I crochet so I don't strangle people" or "I'm a programmer; trust me", because some sort of computer algorithm (look at me, using words I don't fully understand) has taken your personal information in order to sell you something.  One that pops up on my feed frequently says "I'm a Texas girl living in an Ohio world", and every time I see it I think about when I used to be someone who would have bought that shirt and worn it as often as sweat and body odor would allow.  I remember being a scrawny tomboy who loved the Dallas Cowboys and pecan pie, who helped her mother make tortillas in a special pan and wore the burns like a badge of honor.  I remember ducking into a large sewer drain with my sister to get out of a sudden hail storm, riding bikes for hours, neighbors named Bubba and Nacho and Fay.  And I remember the mutiny that rose up in me when my mother announced that we were moving, that she missed her family and we were going home.  Except that Texas was my home, and Rocky and Cathy and Jayne and Freddie were my family and I had finally reached the age where I had real friends that would call on the phone, even though it bored me to talk about clothes for more than a minute

But I really couldn't do anything to stop the move, other than watch the boxes pile up in my room and glare at my mother whenever she talked about how great our lives would be in the North.  This is how little my opinion factored in:  the day that was chosen to pack up our house and leave was my last day of fifth grade.  The day when teachers threw out the lesson plans and brought in sno-cone machines, when recess lasted for hours instead of 30 minutes, when children were emboldened to tell each other their true feelings.  I was sitting beside my mother, the Dallas skyline whizzing past us as we headed to Oklahoma, then Missouri.  And I still remember the conversation that we had that morning, the promise I made to make new friends in our new home, to get along.  My sister apparently made no such concession, because she kept the clock in her room on Central time for more than a year after we settled in the Ohio suburbs (and I wish for the life of me that I knew what happened to finally make her change it, but I'm drawing a blank).  I kept my promise that summer, as we walked our new town to get our bearings, since there were sidewalks everywhere and quiet streets  and everything fit in six square miles.  And I kept my promise as I walked to school each morning, after my dad had left for work and my mother took my sister to the middle school on her way to the hospital.  I listened to the kids around me talking, and I felt like an anthropologist studying an aboriginal tribe.  They used different words, like clique for the way people clumped together at recess and queer (which I thought meant when a boy liked another boy) for when something was strange.  And when I finally did speak, they asked me why I didn't have an accent, and I just shrugged, because the accent I heard most in Texas was the lilting way Hispanic women spoke, and the "Texas" accent heard on tv was more common further south.  But I couldn't keep my promise at our new church, when my parents brought me to the Wednesday night program, when I was expected to walk down the hallway by myself to a room full of people I didn't know, never mind that they were my own age.  That was when I cried and begged them not to leave me, but they did anyway, so that I had to walk down the hallway into a room full of strangers with a splotchy face and red eyes. (This is one of those moments I think about now, and I still don't know if they did the right thing.  Do you push your shy, awkward baby out of the nest or let her stay home with her nose in a book?)   Then one day, on my walk to school, I saw something I'd never seen before.  It was like little ice on each blade of grass.  Later, I learned it is called "frost".  When I got to school, I asked if it had snowed, and I got funny looks. (Much like labor pains, once you've experienced snow, you don't mistake a tiny pattern of cold for the real thing again.)  Actually, I seemed to get funny looks most of the times I spoke.  The boys called me by my last name and the girls had apparently decided who their friends were in kindergarten, and I bounced around trying to find my place.  A year is a long time to go without a friend.  But suddenly sixth grade was ending and I had found Melissa.  Of course, I didn't know then what she would mean to me over the years; pretty much all I knew was the distance from Texas to Ohio, and that people stopped saying Coke and started saying Pop somewhere in between.

That was the turning point for me, finding one person who liked me just the way I was.  The next year, I joined the school band and made more friends.  I had a boyfriend or two, which was more a cause for anxiety than excitement.  I found an identity I could live with, at least for a few years.  I was the nerdy girl who got good grades and used her quick sarcasm to make her friends laugh.  "My So-Called Life" aired for a year, and I watched each episode, entranced by Claire Danes and her struggle to be a good daughter, a fun friend, a desirable girlfriend.  Like many adolescents, I struggled to have control.  It seemed that everything that went wrong could be solved by a change of location.  The kids at my school are snobs.  The winters are too cold.  The budding trees make me sick every spring.  My 18th birthday stood out like a bright yellow Finish line.  Once I got there, everything would be different.  When the college brochures started arriving in the mail my junior year, I tossed every one that was located in Ohio.  I perused the ones from Wisconsin and New York, but they went in the trash once I found out how snowy their winters were.  What remained were schools in Florida, Washington DC, Virginia, Arizona, Georgia, and of course, my beloved Texas.  I had the grades and test scores to go where I wanted, and that was anywhere but here.  But I didn't have the money to pay for any of them.  I still remember the desperation as my senior year drew to a close, trying to come up with a plan, some kind of loan that would get me out of Ohio and on to the life I was supposed to be living.  Finally, in June, after graduation, I admitted defeat and took the short trip up the highway to Kent with my dad, filled out an application and took a tour and went home with an acceptance letter.  It was affordable and offered the degree I wanted, but it was not the grand experience I thought college would be.  So I graduated early and took a job as a flight attendant.  I stepped off the plane in a new city every day, and I invited the world to audition for me.  DANCE.  SING.  Give me a reason to never leave.  I explored New York City and Kalamazoo, Michigan.  I strolled through Jacksonville, Florida and Greensburg, South Carolina.  I ate barbecue in Charleston and lobster in Maine.  I flew to California and Canada and Cincinnati.  And I felt like Goldilocks, because none of them felt quite right.

There was one trip I was saving, a destination I had very high expectations for, the one I was certain would fit like no other city on earth....

I'll be posting the conclusion of my journey on Saturday.  In the meantime, purchase Emily T. Wierenga's new book, Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look on amazon NOW!!  ALL proceeds from Atlas Girl will go towards Emily’s non-profit, The Lulu Tree. The Lulu Tree (www.thelulutree.com) is dedicated to preventing tomorrow’s orphans by equipping today’s mothers. It is a grassroots organization bringing healing and hope to women and children in the slums of Uganda through the arts, community, and the gospel.

On Fantasy

I realized something about myself recently, about a little habit I have on the Internet.  It's time to confess...Every so often, I get this urge, and so I go online, and I begin at a certain website.  I scroll through photos, and I fantasize.  The website is Zillow.com; the pictures are of houses for sale in my area.  Yes, real estate is my porn.

I have no plans to move, to sell our current house or buy another.  I just like to look.  I like to see what houses are selling for in certain neighborhoods, what kind of square footage you can get in different school districts.  I cringe at older homes with busy wallpaper or forest green carpet.  I drool over slate fireplaces and large kitchens.

But it's more than just a time waster.  I imagine myself in those homes.  I think about how my furniture would fit...or, better yet, new furniture!  I imagine how much space I would have preparing a meal on those granite counters, what it would be like to have a dishwasher, playing with my kids in that fenced in backyard with the lush grass.  If we lived THERE...we would be happy.  If our house had THAT feature, my life would be easier.  The house would always be as clean as it is online.  The sheets would match.  There wouldn't be spills or stains or sick children there.  Ants wouldn't crawl all over the counters.  Things wouldn't break.  Everything would be better SOMEWHERE ELSE.

That's not true, is it?  If I moved into a different house, even a newer house, I'd bring my family and my own clumsiness with me.  Dust would begin to settle on window ledges, balls would be thrown across the living room, orange juice wouldn't stay at the table, but would dribble down the beautifully carpeted hallways.  I would still have to clean.  I would still lose my temper.  We wouldn't change, just our surroundings would.

What I need, instead, is to stay in reality.  I need to look around at all that I have, and realize that it's enough.  This house is a blessing.  We moved in here 7 years ago, when our little family consisted of me, Chris, and our 6 month old baby.  We have hosted birthday parties and barbecues, we have wept and struggled and laughed and persevered.  We have grown here.  Our family has gotten bigger, but we've grown up too.  And the love that we share isn't going to get better if we have a real mudroom or our own master bath.

If home is where the heart is, then my heart is a yellow house on a quiet street with dandelions in the yard and toys on the roof.