Let My Love Open the Door

It is said that some people wear their hearts on their sleeves. From now until at least Valentine's Day I'm wearing mine on my front door. The result of a scavenger hunt in my basement and a desire to spend no money on door decor to commemorate the month of hearts and flowers, I found an old galvanized metal heart (purchased years ago at the Alameda Flea Market) to hang on my door.

The tin-type ticker was then wrapped with rusty wire, and finally adorned with a smattering of treasures (aka; old junk) using tea-stained silk ribbon (also purchased many moons ago and apparently saved for this very moment). Everything is better with a bit of embellishment, right?

As I was tying the assortment of brass hearts, tiny picture frames, old-fashioned keys and escutcheons (again, all things hidden away in a drawer just waiting for this project to come along), the 1980 Pete Townsend song "Let My Love Open the Door" kept running through my head. Always one of my favorite tunes, I sang to myself as I worked.

Let my love open the door...to your heart...but it wasn't the Pete Townsend version I heard in my head, it was the heartbreakingly sweet Steve Carell acoustic version from the movie "Dan In Real Life".

Remember the scene? Carell's "Dan", having begun to come back to life following the loss of his wife two years earlier and doing his best to raise his three daughters alone, is performing a duet of LMLOtD with his doofus brother at the family talent show. Dan has come to the realization that the woman he fell in love with only a day earlier is in fact Doofus Brother's girlfriend (THE ONE, according to the brother). Add to that the fact that his teen daughter just called him "a murderer of love!" (priceless!)...let's just say things are not going well for Dan.

Carell manages to wrap up all Dan's feelings of loss, of bittersweet irony, anguish, and longing into his rendition of Townsend's classic. It gets me every single time - and I have seen it many times! It's one of those movies my girls and I can curl up and watch over and over. We laugh, we cry. They love Dan's bungling but good-hearted attempts to single parent his teen and 'tween daughters. Of his attempts to protect and let go all at once. Isn't that always the challenge?

While tying the bits and bobs to my heart using the silk ribbon, singing, it hit me that this is what we do to our own hearts in real life. We collect experiences, people, and memories, attaching them to our hearts like a bowerbird affixes beautiful and interesting objects to its nest; symbols of love and loss, of forever and for now, of life's lessons, good and bad, that we carry with us through all time.

Some things merely adorn and some things protect. Some things help and some may hinder, we are not always the best judges of this, I have found. But we keep at it, we keep adding embellishments to our hearts, filling them up until the day we no longer need them.

Who and what embellishes your heart?

When people keep repeating
That you'll never fall in love
When everybody keeps retreating
But you can't seem to get enough

Let my love open the door...

When everything feels all over
Everybody seems unkind
I'll give you a four leaf clover
Take all worry out of your mind

Let my love open the door...

I have the only key to your heart
I can stop you falling apart
Try today, you'll find this way
Come on and give me a chance to say...

Let my love open the door, it's all I'm living for
Release yourself from misery
There's only one thing gonna set you free
That's my love, that's my love

Let my love open the door...