***
“Why do you get so sad when you think about me aging, Mama?”
There had been no hints given to me from the flow of her thoughts that the question was coming. Being blindsided, especially by a child, was quite a blow to my confidence, but then, this was my daughter, and she was brilliance beyond me, so of course she had been able to sneak up on me. I looked at her for a moment, and then diverted my gaze. For the life of me, I could not think of a sufficient answer. Did I admit to what I felt when I thought of her aging? Did I try to explain it to her when I could barely explain it to myself? Or did I lie, and tell her that she was mistaken?
Lying wasn’t an option. I reminded myself that she was brilliance beyond me, and sighed heavily.
“I want you to age, Penny. Daddy wants you to age. Adam wants both you and Idan to age. It’s time. You have been scared all of these years, and perhaps somewhere in your mind, you and Idan and the other children in here have acknowledged that staying young protects you from harm, and you would be right. That alone would drive my wish for you to stay as you are now.”
“But it isn’t just that alone.” She said, and it was half a question, half a statement, and spoken so matter-of-factly.
“No.” I answered, looking up into her large blue eyes set into her perfectly round cheeks that flushed all pink when she laughed or cried. I could not picture looking upon a more mature version of that face, even though I was beginning to see traces of that version every day. I could not imagine her any different than how she was then. I had been spoiled with her unchanging youth, and now, I had to let go, but I could not let her go.
She reached out to me, having read those thoughts as they ran, frantic and yet tangled with sadness, through my mind. Her little hand grasped mine, and tears came into my eyes when she squeezed gently.
“Mama,” She said, “You and I are always going to be together. That is what you are afraid of. You won’t say it, but that’s what I see in your mind.”
I wanted to scold her for entering my mind, but I knew she could not help it. I wanted to be angry, more that there was that truth in my heart and mind for her to know at all, and not that she had found out. I was so profoundly selfish. I wanted her to stay as she was because I could love her very easily when she was that way. When she became a teenager, she would forge her way in the world, and that would inevitably require her to leave James and me—but especially me—behind. She had been my entire world from the moment she was born. I had loved her, somewhat inexplicably, as my own child rather than just as a sister. Perhaps it is not inexplicable—my mother had gone right back to nightly (and sometimes daily) imbibing, and if I had not stepped in, Penny would have sat in diapers full of her own excrement, drinking bottles of booze-laced breast milk, slowly dying. Of course I had stepped in. Of course I had loved her. But there had been a moment right after she was born when I had wondered if perhaps our mother was going to be better. Perhaps seeing that beautiful little baby girl would change her. As I was thinking those thoughts, and praying for them, I was loving Penny as my own. Does that seem paradoxical? Does that seem strange? It does and it does not to me, because I tell myself that I knew she could never be different, that not even a perfect child such as Penny could change her. But still, it rings strange to me when I think how instantaneously I had loved Penny as my own child. It had not been bred from need, from Penny’s need for me, because I had thought for a moment that my mother could be better for Penny’s sake, but instead, it was bred from nature, from the moment I saw her.
So to picture her leaving me, after all we had been through together, was a thought with which I could not grapple. I loved her too much for my own good, and for her own good. I wanted her to stay young so she could not go off into that big, dangerous, terrifying, exciting, beautiful world into which we had escaped the end of our world. I did not want the target painted in red upon her back to darken each year that she aged. I did not want to fear pushing her away, as I had done to Violet, when Violet had begun to stand on her own.
I was selfish, because part of the reason why I loved them is because they made me feel needed, while my parents had made me feel disposable. I have heard that this is common, and perhaps you have felt this way. I cannot forgive myself for it now, because though it was nature that kept her young and not my wishing, I did not know if, when given the chance for a wish granted, I would not have wished for her to stay young. There were so many reasons why I wanted her to stay as she was, and some were self-centered, and some were not.
“You are always so good at hiding when you’re afraid.” She told me softly, “But you can’t hide it now. You’re afraid for me, Mama. You’re afraid for you, too. But why do you feel so bad about it?”
“Because I should have been encouraging you for all of these years to try to age. You deserve a normal life. You deserve to age until your fixed point, and then stop, and then go off and do whatever you want to do. I have loved having you as my little girl for all of this extra time, and that is wrong, Penny. I should not have thanked God or the Gods for it. I should have been asking for them to jumpstart the aging process again. It was wrong of me, Penny.”
She squeezed my hands again.
“Are you going to love me any less than you do now when I’m older?”
The question shocked me. When I went to answer, I stuttered over my words until I could finally exclaim, “No!” very emphatically. After the word had left my mouth, I realized what she had done. She had seen that fear inside of me and forced me, by throwing the question of it at me when I was least expecting it, to see that to fear it was silly. It was so unfounded. I loved her as a child so much that it boggled me, and I would love her as a teenager and as an adult as I loved her then. My love for Violet had been that of a sibling. My love for Penny was the boundless, powerful, infinite, great and terrible love of a mother. A true mother, not the sad excuse that we had both been given in the beginning.
As I swiped at the tears that were overflowing out of my eyes, she smiled.
“Mama.” She said, “You gotta stop worrying so much.”
God, she sounded like James when she said that…
“Everything is going to change soon, and things are going to be hard, and scary, and sad, but everything will be okay in the end. Isn’t that what you always say?”
I did say that, but I said it to reassure her, not because I had seen it. I did not know which of us would survive the war, or if any of us would. But the way she was smiling, the way her eyes were so full of light and calm, told me that she had seen it, and though she might only be seeing the end of one darkness that would certainly be followed by another—if she saw us surviving one fight only to be thrust into the next—or if we would truly all see the end of the war, I did not know. But when I wiped the tears from my eyes again, I found that they were the last to fall.
“That is what I say, baby.” I told her, and we laid back in her bed. She cuddled up in my arms as she always did, and nestled her head against my chest. But when she began to talk to me soothingly, the way I always talked to her, I could not help but smile at the role reversal. I could not help but beam with pride at how smart, wise, and mature my little girl was becoming.
“You have to trust me, Mom.” She whispered, “Everything is going to be okay. Even when it seems like everywhere in the world has gone dark, there will still be a tiny sliver of light. Sometimes, it’s so small you can’t even see it or sense it. Sometimes, it is right there, right where you can reach it. But it’s always there, Mama. You know that. It doesn’t matter who is beside you, or who is gone, you have to know that the light is always there.”
Her voice was weighted with sleep, and I knew that she was lying with her eyes closed as she spoke. My eyes were closed, as well, and I could feel sleep’s arms slowly tightening around me.
“The light is there, Mama. Okay?”
I nodded, and answered, “Okay.”
The slight, silent storm of worry I had scarcel
y seen in her heart calmed. She smiled, and fell off to sleep.