I’m on the last notes of the third lullaby. My baby’s blinks get slower and heavier and, after running my finger down the bridge of her nose, she finally closes her eyes. It’s a miracle, really, that babies ever sleep. And though I’m tired to the bones, I’m mesmerized by her stillness and I realize that, until this moment, I didn’t know someone could have perfect eyelids. I rock and hold her and watch her sleep, then rub my face against her velvety head one more time.
Oh, the feeling of a cheek against a scalp.
It’s Esther in my head again.
I met her a few years ago when I worked at a memory care facility for the elderly. I was the twenty-two-year-old activities director. She was an eighty-year-old resident with dementia.
There were others, of course—Margaret and Eleanor and Cora and Elsie and Pearl. They were a sisterhood unaware of what brought them together, what affliction they shared. Some still recognized their husbands and knew the names of their children. Others were further down the path, had stopped speaking, stopped smiling, curled inward.
Esther still recognized her grown children when they came to visit. But during those long stretches between visitors, in her mind she often became a child again. If she wandered, she was looking for her father. If she waited by the door, it was because he was on his way to pick her up.
Time for our Sunday drive around St. Paul. We’ll pile in the car and sing as we go!
On a shelf in the common area was a basket with baby dolls, bottles, blankets, and diapers. Esther and the other members of The Sisterhood loved to take care of the dolls, to pat their plush backs and caress their plastic faces. They believed the babies were real. Often when one of the women was anxious, I’d place a doll in her arms and watch her agitation fade as she rocked the baby and told him everything would be just fine. And everything was fine, sure. Except for that ache in my chest.
I stopped working full-time when I had my first child, but I still went to the facility once a week to sing, paint, or play cards with The Sisterhood. I continued this even after my second daughter, Lucy, was born. When she was two months old, I brought her with me to visit.
Some of the women had passed away by then, and those who remained were deeper in the trenches of dementia. Some were new to the group, threadbare memories of how they used to be still accessible and maddening.
I wanted the women not only to see Lucy, but to hold her. With wheelchairs and walkers, they gathered in a circle and I delicately placed Lucy in a pair of withered arms, and then another and another in turn. They cooed to her and tickled her toes and bounced her as they reminisced about their own babies. One of the women said we should get our girls together to play sometime (she had two daughters also), and though I knew they were both in their 40s, I said I’d like that very much.
When it was Esther’s turn to hold Lucy, she moved more slowly than usual as she placed one hand under Lucy’s bottom and the other under her head. She laid Lucy on her shoulder, and I smiled to see a white-haired head and a peach fuzz head, side by side. One old and one new. One on the way in, one on the way out. Sisters.
Esther patted and caressed. Lucy squirmed and gurgled, smelling of soap and sour milk, like real babies do. Esther brushed her wrinkled, rosy cheek against Lucy’s soft, warm head.
“Oh, the feeling of a cheek against a scalp,” she said.
Her words were charming and unusual and so right. I snatched them from the air and put them in a locket. And every time since then when I nuzzle my face against my baby’s wispy hairs, the locket opens and I hear Esther’s voice and I wonder how many cheeks are longing for scalps, have already forgotten what they feel like. What they really feel like.
