What a fascinating, marvelous, miraculous creation is the heart! Its muscular right and left chambers continuously pump blood without reminder, as its various valves and vessels skillfully circulate that life-giving fluid. But although it has many parts, the heart functions as a whole, or not at all.

When things go wrong with our physical hearts, they must either be repaired…or replaced. Although some diseased or malfunctioning organs (like a spleen or an appendix) may simply be removed, the heart must stay. And while other ailing parts may be cut away (so that we make-do with only a fraction of them) a man’s heart cannot be divided and remain viable.

One on the sidewalk as I’m walking my dog. One at the grocery store, right next to my car, driver’s side. One standing upright in the grass at the park near my house. Even one in the garage (not a high, bird-traffic area), near the washing machine. Lately it seems I’ve been finding feathers everywhere – nearly a dozen now, but I won’t bore you with all the locations. And not old, matted, musty feathers. Perfect ones – blue, brown, white and grey – that look as if their previous owners might have left them as a calling card.

Some people find pennies. I’m finding feathers.

My city has a free monthly paper that I call the “pretty people paper.” It’s a slick, four-color, multi-sectioned tabloid with gorgeous ads from trendy retailers that I seldom recognize, much less frequent.

The “pretty people” are photographed in bunches and posing alone at charity events, boutique openings, art and fashion shows and private gatherings. They’re well-dressed, trim, tanned, and sometimes a little too obviously botoxed. I can’t imagine any of them in Levi’s or sweats. (And certainly not sweating.)

Sometimes I see someone I know in the pretty people paper. But they’re mostly strangers. I like to look anyway. It’s like a field trip to place in your city you’ve heard about, but never visited.

For several days now, my home has looked (and sounded) more like a war zone than a sanctuary. As I write these words, my living and dining room furniture has been “dispatched” to bedrooms, hallway and kitchen, and no matter how often I sweep, my adorable dust-mop of a dog is collecting tiny flecks of sawdust in his coat that he distributes wherever he goes.

The repairs to the hardwood floors in my old duplex are taking twice as long as promised (isn’t that always the way it goes?) and my patience is stretching only half as far as I’d hoped.

I may as well confess. I like order. I like things in their place, and looking lovely. I like working to the sound of music or the muted street noise outside my window – not (I’ve discovered) to the screeching of an electric saw and the dull pounding of a rubber mallet.

I’d almost forgotten phonics. It’s been a long time since I’ve sounded out words in pieces in order to read them. But last week I was reminded when a dear friend’s son read aloud to me from a beginner’s story book. I don’t recall the name of the book, or truthfully, even the contents of the story. Those things weren’t the point. The point was the first grader leaning over the book in my lap and word by word, stringing the sounds together so that one day, stories would make sense.

It was a beautiful struggle – and a fine beginning.

I’d almost forgotten that I learned “catch” by finding a hard “k” sound, following it with an “eh,” and then a “ch.” And that a word like “weighs” is a lot harder than “ways” to figure out.

My dog smiles. He really does. He has two smiles, actually. One is an open-mouthed, tongue-hanging-out grin that he reserves for company. He goes temporarily berserk when the doorbell rings, runs madly through the living room until guests have been “herded” in and seated, then parks himself in front of the one he deems most amenable to him and turns on the goofy charm.

I don’t know what he’s thinking (or if he’s thinking) – but his “company” smile seems to say “Wow! That was exhilarating! Now it’s time for you to tell me how much you appreciated my energetic performance, and how desperately cute I am!” (Most people oblige.)

My home has been invaded…twice. And while neither invasion was life threatening, both seemed quite disturbing and – to my mind at least – demanded immediate action.

The first intruder was a small, green lizard. He’d somehow made his way inside and had no doubt explored quite a bit of my home’s square footage before I saw him on my writing desk behind my pencil cup. While I was at my desk. Writing. Quite near said cup of pencils.

In many respects I consider myself a brave woman. I’ve faced CEO’s and a television camera or two; jumped from a perfectly good plane and spoken before plenty of people smarter than me. But none of that made my heart pound like my reptilian intruder. Since there was no one else to call, I stalked him myself – dreading the moment when I’d have to reach out my hand and pinch his tiny tail between my thumb and forefinger for a hasty eviction.

I saw him sitting on the curb with his skateboard wedged under his knees as I approached the stop sign, and almost immediately decided he must be waiting there for a bus. He looked about 16…brown skin, dreads, baggy sweat pants and a basketball jersey that probably hung below his knees when he stood. He would have looked less out of place in my part of town than the in the neighborhood I was driving through.

As I slowed to a stop I might have simply looked straight ahead, filing his image away in my mind under “kid alone at dusk, waiting for a bus,” except for one thing. He was reading a book. Reading intently, and shaping the words with his lips as though saying them out loud might make them easier to follow. And the book he was reading was a paperback copy of Elie Wiesel’s Night.

Returning last week to the small town where my mother grew up brought back a wave of memories. It always does.

My sister showed me the small house where my grandmother once lived, right across the street from the Baptist church. The outside of the place looked vaguely familiar; my sister, although barely a year older, could still describe the inside in great detail. I can’t remember it at all.

Then my aunt took us by the tiny guest cottage behind someone else’s bigger house where my grandfather lived for a time, and although it is barely standing now, I recognized it immediately. I couldn’t shape the interior in my mind but I do remember this: he cooked fried chicken for me there, and a peach tree stood in the back yard.

I’m neat. Not freakishly, compulsively neat – but orderly. I like things to make sense. It pleases me when one thing logically follows another. Like when the conclusion of a good book somehow affirms its beginning. Or when I intuitively reach for something in the place it should be…and it is.

But while there’s comfort in finding things as you expected, where you expected – there’s also something a little thrilling about the odd placements of life. Like the single azalea that bloomed in my hedge this week more than a month after the thousands of others had faded and fallen. Or opening the newspaper last week and seeing that the sports section has been completely redesigned. Or that my favorite neighborhood coffee shop has stopped making pistachio muffins and begun experimenting with cranberries.