My heart is a compass – By Deborah Marcero
Here is a book that spoke to the very depths of the child in me. I am sure many of us have spent time with just this sort of activity, and may be not with such fantastic results to show for it.
I distinctly remember :
❅ ❄️❆ Drawing snowflakes of every shape I could fathom ever since I learnt that every snowflake was different. Considering I had never seen snow, that seems like a pretty bold endeavor, but that right there is the charm of childhood and imagination. I am not sure if I would like to find those pages of doodles now – the memory of those warm afternoons is more beautiful than anything I could’ve conjured up.
🍃🍀🍁The shapes of all the different leaves. The leaves themselves dried and carefully preserved within the pages of books. All that remains now is the memory of this precious activity and of course the inestimable happiness of afternoons spent drawing the beautiful shapes into notebooks, after the glorious wind swept mornings collecting them.
🌷🌺🪷The nosegay bouquet of wildflowers plopped into brass vases that spotted the house. How could one not look at that and remember the ladybugs clinging to the leaves, the spider webs wet with dew, the scents of eucalyptus that decades later can still send one back to the beautiful countrysides scented with the fresh rain against the eucalyptus trees?
It is always a marvel to me how our mental maps form around these seemingly innocuous objects. The raspberry bushes by the little cave, the eucalyptus trails by the deserted bridge. If only, we had the foresight to etch these into little maps like the lovely little girl in My Heart is a Compass does. What a treasure that would have been?
The book starts off with a young girl wanting to show her most precious innovative unique possession for show-and-tell. But what is it?
Could it be a trip to the stars?
Or a dive into the wonders of the ocean?
Or a marvelous hike through the enchanted forests?
Pic from her preview on Amazon
By the end of the book, Rose wants to showcase the very best things in life for her friends to see. So she comes up with a marvelous map with the most wondrous her imagination can come up with. (Which can be the most beautiful or the most terrifying, and in this beautiful book is nothing but intriguing and promising)
I set the book down and wondered again why that beautiful feeling of childhood curiosity and the tendency to look at the world as a magical mystical place wanes with time. The imaginary overtaken by reality, knowledge overtaking intuition, logical vs emotional. Our heart is a compass, and in an ideal world should lead us towards happiness.
In the long journey of life, if only there was a tonic to never lose that wonder, but constantly add to it, how marvelous the adventure of living would be!
Nourish-n-Cherish 