The Same Sky
This morning Aubrey studied my face. While sucking her thumb, an activity she’s slowly eliminating from her routine, she pointed to my face with her free hand: “You have a dot here, it’s brown,” she said, pointing to the bridge of my nose. “And a dot here above your lip,” pointing next to my nose. “That one’s the same color as your skin.”
She studies me the way lovers study each other, the way I study her father, tracing the details of the skin—the marks along the cheekbone, the spine, across the shoulder blade, around the ankle. She looks at me with such love and familiarity I recall studying my own mother’s face when I was four. I pointed at the brown dot on each cheek, the perfect symmetry. “What are those?” I’d asked. “Some people call them moles, others call them beauty marks,” she’d said. “I’ll call them beauty marks,” I’d said, caressing her face, drinking her in. A couple years later, I would fold pink construction paper in half for Mother's Day, and draw her dark curly hair, her square jaw, her brown eyes—such a contrast to my own hazel eyes and straight blonde hair. And, finally, I’d make her cheeks rosy, with a brown dot on each. Unmistakably my mother.
Now I look into Aubrey’s face (every day, as much as I can) and memorize the little mark below her eye, the one next to her nose, the one across her face on the other side of her chin. And Dane, my boy, I memorize his too: at the outer tip of one eyebrow, one next to his nose—on the opposite side of his sister’s—then across his face to his cheek, and then on the edge of his chin. I think Little Dipper, Orion, my own little constellations.
At my yearly physical, the doctor checks my skin, the marks on my body. She looks for the mark that might not belong, because our moles grow in families, she says. Wherever there’s one of a certain kind (in color or shape or size) there’ll be another somewhere. That’s how we know what belongs. I think of my mother, my husband, my children. I put our faces side by side in my mind. I think of these families of moles, passed down to generations, our beauty marks to memorize and recall, our own little constellations hailing from the same sky.
This morning Aubrey studied my face. While sucking her thumb, an activity she’s slowly eliminating from her routine, she pointed to my face with her free hand: “You have a dot here, it’s brown,” she said, pointing to the bridge of my nose. “And a dot here above your lip,” pointing next to my nose. “That one’s the same color as your skin.”
She studies me the way lovers study each other, the way I study her father, tracing the details of the skin—the marks along the cheekbone, the spine, across the shoulder blade, around the ankle. She looks at me with such love and familiarity I recall studying my own mother’s face when I was four. I pointed at the brown dot on each cheek, the perfect symmetry. “What are those?” I’d asked. “Some people call them moles, others call them beauty marks,” she’d said. “I’ll call them beauty marks,” I’d said, caressing her face, drinking her in. A couple years later, I would fold pink construction paper in half for Mother's Day, and draw her dark curly hair, her square jaw, her brown eyes—such a contrast to my own hazel eyes and straight blonde hair. And, finally, I’d make her cheeks rosy, with a brown dot on each. Unmistakably my mother.
Now I look into Aubrey’s face (every day, as much as I can) and memorize the little mark below her eye, the one next to her nose, the one across her face on the other side of her chin. And Dane, my boy, I memorize his too: at the outer tip of one eyebrow, one next to his nose—on the opposite side of his sister’s—then across his face to his cheek, and then on the edge of his chin. I think Little Dipper, Orion, my own little constellations.
At my yearly physical, the doctor checks my skin, the marks on my body. She looks for the mark that might not belong, because our moles grow in families, she says. Wherever there’s one of a certain kind (in color or shape or size) there’ll be another somewhere. That’s how we know what belongs. I think of my mother, my husband, my children. I put our faces side by side in my mind. I think of these families of moles, passed down to generations, our beauty marks to memorize and recall, our own little constellations hailing from the same sky.
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