Pulse

I’m sitting on the stairs at Victoria Gymnastics, watching Rio fly through the air, his sandy blonde hair streaming out behind him, as he launches himself off a mini-tramp. He’s getting good at this, pushing himself in a way that makes me awe struck. Between the mini-tramp and the tumble track he dances on a matt to a rhythm only he can hear. Watching him physically grow up is such a precious gift.

A few hours ago I was flying (though not through the air, thank God) myself, running up and over Mount Doug during a short, but grueling scamper on the rocky front side of the hill. There is a rhythm to this too, and a pulse. Once when running up the steepest ridge on the tiny hill with my best friend Josh we checked our pulses after making the dash from bottom to top in 12 minutes: 190 beats per second. The pulse of a hummingbird? Sedate by comparison.

Sitting on the stairs, watching Rio, I become aware that I’m swaying forwards and back. Forwards and back. It is my pulse that is moving me. I’ve noticed this before. Sometimes if I sit with one leg crossed over the other at the knee, the top leg actually bounces. Today the rhythm of my heart is actually moving me back and forth. I’m hoping that such a prominent pulse isn’t a bad thing.

Forwards and back. The pulse. The heart pumps because of electrical waves generated by the Sino arterial node. This node is cellular tissue located in the right atrium of the heart that acts as the body’s natural pacemaker, creating a “sinus rhythm”. (Not to be confused with the metrical blowing of one’s nose when suffering from allergies, which is the other sinus rhythm.)

The Sino arterial tissue is composed of special cells called cardiac myocytes which generate the electrical pulse. In essence, the heart is a muscle that generates its own electrical cadence that causes the contraction and expansion of its cells and results in the pulse of blood through our bodies.

Anybody who isn’t awestruck by that simply isn’t spending enough time marveling at their own human self. How this electrical impulse starts, and how the brain, which is also something of an energizer battery, keeps tabs on all this, is yet unknown to me. I need more time with Wikipedia.

What I do know is that these waves of electricity pass through us and out of us. We can measure them with electrodes attached to the skin. Researchers have shown that these electrical waves extend far beyond the body. As tools for measuring this human electrical pulse become more sophisticated we are learning that the field encompassed by a human pulse seems almost without practical limit.

If someone was to sit down next to me on the stairs at the Victoria Gymnastics club on Friday, they would be sitting down inside the electrical field of my pulse. They would be sitting down, in a sense, inside a part of me.

And I them.

We are a little naive to think that who we are is encompassed by the seemingly solid demarcation of our epidermis. We breath in, and we take in the world around us, it mixes with blood pumped from our hearts, and in a quick wink, is circulated to every cell in our body. And just as quickly, the byproducts of our existence at that cellular level are circulated back, deposited via our blood stream in our lungs, and then, we breathe out. We are released back into the world around us. Forward and back.

But of course, even that think layer of skin that keeps everything from dropping onto the trail as I lumber up the rocky hills on the Saanich Peninsula is almost entirely not there. At the molecular level, my skin that holds me intact, among other things, and the muscles that pulse after a long run, my heart that beats its electric rhythm, my brain that somehow keeps track of my children’s birthday’s and ensures that my Pancreas knows just what to do when I eat a big meal; all of these things are almost entirely made up of nothing.

And so, I am a pulse of electricity, moving among other pulses of electricity, exchanging both matter and energy with everything and everyone I meet.

That’s both really nice sounding, and a little creepy.

Over the weekend, I think about pulse.

On Thursday night I swim with my children, marveling again at Rio as he twists and turns underwater, and at Silas, his wrestler like arms wrapped around my neck as we bob along with the current in the whirlpool.

Friday is gym. Friday night Jenn and I go to a farewell party for a friend and colleague and walk home in the dark arm-in-arm. Saturday we take the boyz to Wiffle Spit near Sooke, where Rio can dance along with the waves, and Silas hunkers down to get intimate with a stick (it’s a paintbrush, he says) and the earth (his palate).

Sunday we head to Clover Point. Fly a kite. Play soccer. Throw a Frisbee. See fire trucks, and a new fire boat. Race along the rocks on the beach. Drink hot chocolate at the end of the day.

It’s a perfect weekend, and by the end of it, I’m more deeply in love with all three of these people than I ever dreamed possible.

We’re caught in each other’s pulse.

It’s the most amazing place to be.