Leap year

I wait until they are both asleep. This takes some time. It always takes time. Like their mother, their minds race at bedtime and the darkness does not help. Unlike their mother, they have yet to learn that daytime sleep is less fraught with peril, that a daytime nap in a sunny room is one of life’s sweetest blessings. Perhaps they will learn, perhaps they will always think otherwise.

It is difficult to say what they will think, what they will remember, of this time. I remember the strangest scenes from my childhood, dreamlike clips I can rarely find anyone to corroborate. It has made me an intensely private person over the years, remembering scenes that others say they do not. Private, despite all appearances to the contrary: a blogger! busking, no less! shameless extravert!

I pad quietly into Sophie’s room and sit on the edge of her bed. I lay one hand on her warm body: first her cheek, then her shoulder. She is nestled in her blankets, which will not last long. By three in the morning, the covers will be kicked off completely and she will crawl into bed with me, tucking her freezing toes against my legs. I will say, “No, no, sweetie,” and she will say, nearly asleep, “Please? Just for a few minutes?” and I will say, “Okay. Okay. A few minutes.” And we will wake up together.

But for now, all seems as it should. A little girl who has done her homework the night before, a little girl who reads beautifully at six, a little girl curled up under two proper blankets, sleeping. A mother sitting on the edge of her bed, one hand resting on her little girl.

My tears come. Of course they do.

Tomorrow we will tell the girls about a difficult loss. It is a peculiar thing to sit on the edge of your child’s bed, watching her sleep, knowing that tomorrow you will say something that will stop her heart briefly and force her through a door she would not have chosen herself. Children do not take kindly to loss, and why should they? As adults we can barely stand it, barely have the ability to comprehend the who-was-who-now-isn’t, the what-was-that-now-is-lost.

I watch her dark profile. She is a beautiful girl, as still sometimes in her waking hours as she is right now, asleep. I think, This is her last night of not knowing. Tomorrow we take away the not-knowing.

Across the hall, in Hattie’s room, the Canon in D is playing over and over. Hattie likes it very much, and has learned to program her small CD player to repeat the song all night long. It helps her to sleep. It helps her, but hearing it from across the hall is not helping my resolve, the hand-to-hand combat I am doing with my own fear.

I lean down and kiss Sophie and tell her I love her. She does not hear, but maybe she does.

There are different kinds of losses. The obvious: I remember when my mother sat on the edge of my bed the morning of December 1, 1985, to tell me that her mother, my beloved Nana, had passed away the night before. I remember the bright winter light filtering the room, I remember sleeping under an afghan my Nana had helped me to crochet. I remember the gentleness in my mother’s voice. I was 15, and was old enough to know this loss was coming, but still. November 30 became to me the Great Before, and December 1, the Great After.

Little did I know then that there would come many, many more Great Befores and Afters—bookmarks placed into my life, some of my own doing, some not, some a bit of both.

I cross the hall to Hattie’s room and sit quietly on the nursing rocker still beside her bed. Unlike her older sister, who sleeps on her side, curled up the same way she appeared without fail in her sonogram pictures (a curved, if now gangly bean), Hattie sleeps on her face, rump high in the air. It is a fitting posture for our comedienne. I take some comfort in the sameness of her, day through night. I don’t know how to explain the loss to her. Will we need different words for each daughter?

The morning task seems overwhelming, and so for now, I just rock gently in the nursing glider, thinking of how much sugar-sweet breastmilk I have shed upon its rough green upholstery. Sitting, rocking—right now, it is all I can do. I have no more milk to give, nothing so comforting anymore. If Hattie had picked a different song—something from The Nutcracker, anything but this—I would not cry. But of course, the tears keep coming. I am a sucker for Canon in D, and always will be, no matter how many commercials snap it up, no matter how many wedding couples snag it as their own. It is funny, all that we think we may lay claim to.

I want to be the one who gives. I never wish to take away from these beautiful little girls whom we love so dearly, and whom we are just beginning to understand. Tomorrow morning, over pancakes, we will nudge them through a doorway, watch as best we can to be sure their fingers and toes are through. Then, we will gently close that door.

I pat Hattie’s raised, chubby bum gently and resist the urge to pull the blankets up over her sleeping form. She is very particular about her covers, and does not like them moved or shifted. She likes to be in charge of her bed. I understand this. At four, there is not a lot you get to be the boss of. Your covers should be your turf.

I rock some more. I think: Loss is loss; there is rarely recovery. Recovery is a myth; change is what comes after a loss, not recovery. There is merely change. And it is an ugly, lurching, fearsome stranger, most of the time. It is difficult to reach out a hand to loss, to welcome him in, to offer a chair, a warm drink for his troubles.

There are bumper stickers that say “CHANGE IS GOOD.” The girls think change in the form of spare change—still-shiny quarters and grimy nickels—is good, very good indeed. I have been looking at the years stamped on coins before I slip them into parking meters. 1988: first year of college. 1997: graduation from grad school. 1999: wedding in NYC. 2001, 2003: heralding the girls into this life. I search for the dates on my coins greedily, looking for signs. I wonder if my daughters will be sign-seekers as well. Will they tell me? Will they know that I understand?

I am weary—still not able to sleep without a little pinch of pharmaceutical help, but weary enough to realize it’s time to fetch that small pill. I rise from the nursing glider, cup Hattie’s warm head in my hand and kiss her cheek. I stand and tell her I love her, so quietly the violins from the Canon smoothly override the sentiment. No matter. She will hear it from me again.

I would stand between them and the losses of the world if I could. This is why I cry. Because I am clever; I know well how to create secret compartments and tuck away unpleasantries as needed. It has not served me well over time, not really, but I have a talent for it.

I would like very much to lose this talent. But talents, like habits, are hard things to shake. I do not want to pass my talent for concealment, for swallowing fear and shame and anger, down to my daughters. I want them to grow up courageous in thought and action, clear unblocked vessels. I want them to speak up—to know nothing but speaking up and speaking out—because their mother and father are brave enough to do just that. We are learning, too, all the time.

So tomorrow, we will make pancakes in a sunny kitchen. We will invite them in, with great love and care, we will choose our seats and our words. We will pour amber syrup in absurd pools on our plates, cut our pancakes into mushy bits, and we will gently tell them whom and what we have lost. Beyond that, there is no telling what the day will look like, how the days will unfold after that. All I can picture now as I leave Hattie’s room is the morning maple syrup, the sun filtering through the sheer white cafe curtains, the dogs nudging at our sticky hands for pancake crumbs.

I don’t want to turn away this loss, deny it. We will make room. But there will also be room at our table for courage, a relative newcomer here—at least in its newest incarnation. The girls may not notice that this courage is present. To them, we will be simply serving loss, not pancakes, and for now, no amount of courage will make that sweeter.