REFLECTION

I’ve already described how my brother’s face got burned when he was six months old—and why I felt responsible for his injury. Years later, I had the following dream:

Last night I dreamed I was standing looking at myself in a mirror. I had some sort of stick in my hand, which I brandished like a baseball bat, then tugged at my crotch the way ballplayers do. The next moment I noticed with embarrassment that my brother was sitting on a bed watching me. “I was pretending to be a man,” I explained. At that moment I noticed how much my face in the mirror looked like my brother’s—I had never seen much of a resemblance before. Then I saw I had a burn on my cheek, that my reflection was my brother’s. “Why, I’m seeing your face when I look in the mirror!” I cried. I felt on the verge of a discovery—that something repressed was about to break through, something having to do with the actual events surrounding my brother’s accident. Suddenly I felt two powerful hands grab me by the legs—though no one was there—and start to drag me backward, which scared me awake before I could remember anything more, leaving me with the eerie feeling that whatever the revelation was, something or someone didn’t want me to know.

When Leia was pregnant with Arielle, I bought the book What to Expect the First Year for her baby shower, along with other gifts, then found out she already had a copy. I was intending to return mine but became so absorbed after reading the first few pages that I decided not to. In the chapter “Making Home Safe for Baby,” I read:

“Do not leave baby alone in a room, except in a playpen, crib, or other safe enclosure, and then only for a few minutes, unless he or she is sleeping. Do not leave baby alone even ‘safely’ enclosed in a crib or playpen, awake or asleep, with a preschooler—they often don’t know their own strength or realize the consequences of their actions.”

These were powerful words to me and eased the guilt—somewhat, at least—that I’d always felt about my brother’s accident. As for recovering any repressed memories of it, I never did, though eventually I would learn a key piece of the puzzle.