Your Hearts, Your Scars

Some books are little because they don’t have much to say*. Some books are little because they say so much that they’d be overwhelming if they were longer. The late Adina Talve-Goodman’s funny, brave, and honest memoir, Your Hearts, Your Scars, is one of the latter.

Talve-Goodman was born with a defective heart. Her first live-saving operation came the next day. Her second operation was a week later. After several more operations and living for years with heart failure, she received a transplanted heart (another big operation) at 19. She lived until 31 when cancer, aided by the immuno-suppressing drugs she took to protect her new heart, overtook her. Her friends and family took the essays she’d written and turned them into this lovely and raw and revelatory book.

There’s the story about the boy she brought home for the night when in college, and having sex meant revealing the scars from her transplant the year before, and how absurdly relieved she was when, instead of asking all the usual questions (“Why did you need it? Are you okay now? What about the donor?“), he said “You have great boobs,” just like she was normal. (p. 26)

There’s the story of the first Thanksgiving after her transplant. “My family doesn’t usually do much for Thanksgiving. But the year of the transplant, our gratitude was overwhelming, so we made about seven kinds of pie and then opened the box to view the heart.” (p. 59) Unlike most transplant recipients, Talve-Goodman had asked to keep her old heart. “All I could say was that I wanted it, it had been mine, and I didn’t want it to be thrown away.” (p. 58)

There’s the story of undergoing a cardiac catherization in a new hospital. “I smile and make jokes in these situation because I think that people, doctors, are more likely to want to keep funny people alive.” (p. 94) Of negotiating her treatment from a position of weakness (all patients negotiate from a position of weakness—they’re lying down while doctors and nurses are standing; they’re stripped to hospital gowns; they’re amateurs in the hands of professionals): “I’m a really difficult stick, but this vein, this vein is good. And if it’s okay, can I have a 24 needle…. I’m sorry, but I’d really prefer the 24 (not the 21). You’re not giving me much, right?” (pp. 95-96)

The daughter of two rabbis, Talve-Goodman has what an old friend calls a Talmudic mind. It’s a way of thinking that flows from the belief that there is one G-d. If there’s one G-d, then everything—all of humanity, all of creation—is connected.

“When I listed (for a heart transplant), my parents…told me a story from the Talmud about a rabbi who goes to visit three sick men and each time the rabbi asks, ‘Is your suffering dear to you?’ ‘That’s the whole story,’ they’d explain, ‘and it’s the question that’s important.’ I took it to mean this: When the time comes, will you be able to live without the heart defect that always made you special and strong? Will you be able to face wellness and normalcy?” (p. 28)

And she is. And did for the next 12 years. Filled with the gratitude many transplant recipients experience (I’m here; how amazing is that?), as well as the questions (Do I deserve to be here? What about my donor? What about the patients who didn’t get a transplant? Should I be doing something more? or better? or kinder?).

From the short essays by her family and friends that bracket Your Hearts, Your Scars, it’s clear Talve-Goodman lived those questions with an extraordinary intensity and vivacity throughout her short life. Her own luminous writing confirms their testimonies. This is a lovely and extraordinary little book.

*For example, The One Minute Manager, a business/self-help book that was an inexplicable and inescapable bestseller back in 1982. The book emphasized the importance of what you could accomplish in one minute: neaten up your desk, write a “to do” list for the day, deliver constructive praise (or criticism) to a subordinate. That’s a valuable insight! But not 112 pages of value; today it would be a “Nine Simple Tricks To Taking Control Of Your Job” blog post.

h/t: NMH