Different

Around four months, Lucia started to show an interest in music.  Her interest appears to surpass the usual baby affection for song.  I first noticed it one night while I tried to rush Elsie to bed through a bout of fuss baby.  Elsie chose a bedtime story that is a song.  I was relieved with her choice, because it isn't very long.  I sat and I sang it to her.  Halfway through the book, I realized that Lucia's fussing had ceased.  She lay in a state of rapt attention while I sang.

A few days later, I tuned the radio to the classical station.  It was an act of parental guilt.  I remember how much attention and stimulation I used to give Elsie as a baby.  Lucia gets lots of love, but very little attention.  My mama guilt told me that Lucia deserves Mozart as much as my firstborn.  It wasn't Mozart, but Beethoven that caught Lucia's attention.  Ode to Joy, a grand choral work, played while I sat to nurse.  Lucia -- never one to turn her nose up at a meal -- kept pulling off and staring into space, apparently concentrating on the music. 

I was delighted!  Elsie had never shown such a connection to music as a baby, and this seemed like the first glimmer of Lucia's unique interests and personality that I had seen yet.  Something entirely Lucia, and not simply Baby.

"They're different!" I remarked to myself.

And just like that, I am back in a dark ultrasound room, pregnant with Laurel.   The technician, wearing her poker face, turns back on her way out the door.  Her congenial demeanor dropps abruptly.  She looks at me hard, eyes piercing, and speaks straight. 

"This one is different." She says.  "They're all different." 

In any normal moment, if you asked me to describe this technician from memory, I could do it only in the vaguest of terms.  Female.  Middle aged.  Short-ish hair.  Was it dyed or grey?  It is unlikely I would ever recognize her on the street.  But at THIS moment, sitting in my living room, rocking in Grandmama's old chair, I see her face before me in every detail.  I don't hear Beethoven.  I hear the technician's voice.

"This one is different" It says. "They're all different."

Because I have done my hard work at Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I know what is happening.  I know that this is a flashback, and that it's a symptom of PTSD.  I understand why the memory exists in such glorious detail.  My brain doesn't want me to go through something so traumatic again.  All my fear and devastation at Laurel's diagnosis told my brain, This is a disaster, probably life-threateneing.  If we survive this, we must be sure not to repeat it! My brain then stored up the memory of the preceding moments in the finest detail, so that I could recognize and respond to such danger in the future without having to think about it.  So that the feelings could be accessed unbidden by a hair trigger.  This time, the trigger was one word, thought in delighted wonder, as I marveled at my healthy, living baby.

It rattles me, but I know what to do.  I have to take this trigger and build a new pathway from it.

"Yes."  I say.  "This one is different.  This one is healthy.  This is my healthy Lucia, and she is different from my sick Laurel.  

"And Lucia likes music."




Wishing a loving and peaceful Mother's Day to all the women in this world who possess mother's hearts, whether your arms are full or empty.