Goodnight, Dimples

I’m reading a book about trauma and PTSD right now, and it explains why trauma causes the brain to have flashbacks with intense sensory moments rather than any linear or chronological accounting of the traumatic incident. The book is fascinating and it is helpful to look at my brain through the lens of science to help sort through what I am experiencing, but I think it’s important to point out that love causes the brain to flashback to sensory images and moments in the same way.

Take this, for example: Lizzy is around fourteen months old. She starting walking at nine months, so she’s pretty confident on her feet by now. She’s bouncing around my beige, carpeted bedroom in nothing but a diaper and her amber teething necklace. All of a sudden, I look up from what I’m doing (laundry or something similarly pointless and mundane) and I can’t find Lizzy. I glance immediately to the closed door to make sure she couldn’t have escaped. “Hmm,” I say aloud, “I can’t find Lizzy. I wonder where Lizzy went.” The silence becomes full and tense with her anticipation. I wander around, looking in laundry baskets and behind fake plants, opening up the window and calling her name. Finally, I turn around and find her crouched, knees drawn up to her chest, in the tiny space in between her co-sleeping crib and my nightstand.

And it is this moment that flashes to me with perfect, adamantine precision. Her arms are around her chubby, drawn-up legs. Once she sees me, she puts her arms down to her sides, hands flat against the floor in surprised excitement at being caught. Her eyes light up, scintillating blue rivers. Her blond, blond hair is mussed and glinting in the dim overhead light. Her smile is radiant; her exclamation full of delight in having successfully hidden from me and just slightly tinged by the danger of having been found. She giggles hysterically as I sweep her into my arms and pretend to eat her baby ribs as her reward for having started playing hide-and-go-seek with me before ever I taught it to her.

Today, May 5, is Cecilia’s first birthday, and it is this image of Lizzy that keeps flashing into my head. Perhaps this is because when Cecilia reclines in the snug “u” of her boppy, lazily chewing on her spoon, and I begin to say “Cece . . . Cece . . .” she drops her spoon at the sound of my voice and starts to writhe in toothy and squirming anticipation of being picked up. Or when we walk down the hallway, she gets so excited to be going downstairs that she begins to bounce on my hip, grabbing tightly to my sleeves like a monkey, unable to make up her mind between taking deep breaths and laughing in short, high squeals.

Cece has started to wrinkle her lips up towards her nose and sniff loudly to comment on anything that makes her feel ambivalent. She thinks it’s hilarious when people respond to her snoofy face by sniffing her neck, ribs, and feet. She loves to give high fives and to clap whenever anyone says, “Yay, Cece!” She thinks the pig makes the funniest noise in her farm animals book and prefers to play on her baby piano with her toes. She loves having her hair brushed, says “Ba!” whenever she’s enjoying something, and thinks it’s the funniest thing whenever you blow air through her fingers. At the end of every shower, I blow wet raspberries on her belly and she giggles in dripping delight at receiving her “shower kisses.” She hoots like a baby owl whenever I finish singing the “Skidamarink” song during our evening massage and loves jumping in her bouncer to the Bee Gees. Yesterday, she clapped twice while supporting her own weight during our standing practice session. At 5 am this morning, she called back to the birds at our open window with perfect pitch while the sky lightened towards dawn and the crisp air made us curl tighter beneath the covers.

My girls are as different as the sun and moon, both radiant and life-sustaining. We had a big family party for Lizzy’s first and second birthdays, but I find myself at a loss as to how to celebrate Cece’s first birthday in the midst of grief and Coronavirus quarantine. Perhaps this, like everything else, is just about noticing the small moments, the ones that will come flashing back to you when the person you love most has been taken from you.

I have not been able to read Goodnight, Moon since Lizzy died. On every page, Lizzy would point out the white mouse and say, “That’s a mouse!” in a pitched and secretive whisper. She would roll out of bed, grab the book, and climb back into bed to ask me to read it to her over and over again. It is sitting on the shelf with her other books, her backpack, her nightgown, her toothbrush, and her pink straw hat. I have been unable to summon the courage to read Goodnight, Moon to Cece even though Cece is a more attuned and focused reader at age one than Lizzy was. But tonight, I feel I must face this fear and read this book to my little girl on her first birthday.

I do not know if Cece will ever be able to pick out the little white mouse like Lizzy did, or if she will pick a different part of the story to echo. I don’t know if I’ll need to add braille or texture to it so that Cece can participate and enjoy it more like her other touch and sound books. What I do know is that Cece’s reaction to this book will be ever so different from Lizzy’s, and that I need to see, hear, and feel how different her reactions are. I know that at some point while I read it to her, she will smile, and her beautiful, irrepressible dimples will appear, flashing before me and disappearing again. I know that her dimples remind me of how fleeting and beautiful every moment with her is and how precious and irreplaceable every moment with Lizzy was. I know that letting my fear control how I love my second daughter does not equate to loving my first daughter well. And I know that if Lizzy were alive, she would be snuggled up in the armchair with us, holding tight to us both, and helping point out to her little sister where the little white mouse is.

And so tonight I will read this book to both my girls and if the tears come, I will not let them stop me from seeing Cecilia’s dimples, smiling in return, wishing her a “Happy Birthday,” and kissing her goodnight.