Surprised by Love
Cecilia has started talking to me. She is almost six weeks old, but she started chatting with me about a week ago. Newborns have this state termed “active alert” in which they are calm, quiet, and during which learning is at a peak. They spend this time looking at anything and everything around them, moving their limbs to promote muscle development and circulation, and meanwhile, their brains are essentially working at light-speed. It is during these times that Cecilia has begun talking to me.
Although I do not know what she is saying, I know that what she is saying, she is saying to me–her mom. I know that she wants to share with me what she is seeing, feeling, learning, and experiencing. Her talking ranges from soft gurgles of pleasure to quiet cries of wonder. She often smiles in the midst of these conversations. And I talk back to her, telling her how much I love her, how beautiful she is, how I love that she is telling me wonderful things.
I kiss every square inch of her perfect little body, mottled pink and white with plenty of oxygen. I give her daily massages with coconut oil, and it seems that I’m watching her grow in length and weight day by day. I stroke a fingertip down the bridge of her nose and across her beautiful golden eyebrows, watching her lids close, gently rhythmic, amber lashes floating down like feathers as she surrenders to sleep.
Her eyes are deep blue–ever so much deeper than Lizzy’s, which shone like sunlight refracted against a tropical sea. And her hair is a soft, downy brown–so much darker than Lizzy’s, which was a brilliant, shining blonde from the moment she was born. When she smiles or laughs, Cecilia’s dimples peek out, highlighting exactly how plump her cheeks are growing. Lizzy didn’t have dimples, but her smile was mesmerizing and contagious, and more often than not containing mischief. Cecilia makes noises sometimes that sound like a kitten: soft mews or calls that are catlike in nature. Out of every nickname and pet name that I had for Lizzy (and I had countless), I never called her “kitten.”
Yes, Cecilia is announcing herself as different and unique from her sister. Cecilia is beautifully and wonderfully her own little person, her own particular self–her own beautiful individuality.
Her ears have this gorgeous golden hair on their rims, so fine as to be almost transparent, until its glinting catches you unaware and you stare in wonder that beauty can take so minute a form. Her head fits perfectly in the palm of my hand, its silky warmth melting into the bone, cell, and veins of my skin. The creases on her wrists, ankles, and neck are deepening day by day as life and blood multiply within her and her weight deepens. Her fingers and toes alike curl with surprising strength around my fingers or lips, communicating a need for security that somehow manifests in both of us as belonging.
But her mouth, pink and perfect, is so very like Lizzy’s. Her nose and mouth work in concert as she latches to nurse, her gaze focused but peaceful, her tiny hands kneading the flesh of my breast as she drinks. And the sweet intimacy of this nursing relationship brings Lizzy back in excruciating and blinding detail. My little girl–girls–nurse exactly alike. It could just as easily be Lizzy at my breast as Cecilia–except for the hair and the eyes. I know they are different, and I remind myself of this, but I cannot help but mark the ways in which they are the same. And this knowledge comes inevitably with an aching desire to start all over again with Lizzy as a newborn, and somehow, someway, do enough different along the way to change the outcome. To change it enough to ensure that Lizzy could be standing beside me now as I nurse Cecilia, kissing her forehead gently, and looking at me with her radiant blue eyes, saying “sister!”
But if Lizzy is here with us, I cannot see her. Cecilia rests warm against my abdomen, nursing and content as we listen to both the birds and the breeze play with the trees. Sometimes I feel that Lizzy is inside that breeze, within the birdsong, or traced upon the delicate veins of a leaf that falls to land on my keyboard.
It is not enough, and will never substitute the perfect joy of having Lizzy physically present in this world with me, body and soul. But I find on mornings like these that despite the blood that alternately drips or pours from the unending wound in my side that is Lizzy’s absence, I am still able to feel love for her sister. The blood has not drowned out my ability to love; rather, I feel love for Cecilia more acutely because I think at every moment how quickly it could be taken away. Without trying and without forcing it to be here, love for Cecilia has come to penetrate the fog of grief and it pours forth in small, shocking moments, and I laugh, or smile, or kiss her sweet face.
How can you bleed and ache for the loss of one daughter and simultaneously laugh in joy and need for the other? I don’t have this answer, but I know it is possible. And I know it is possible because, against all fears and expectations, it is happening.