Let There Be Light

Some day, in the far off future, I would like Lily and Annika to know, as Lily might not remember and Annika most certainly won't, that once on a December evening at their grandparents' house, they were put to sleep by candlelight, walked a path of light to reach a room where lights twinkled in the windows and surrounded them, lit their faces as they slept, smiling.

Not real candlelight, of course, but earlier in the day Lily and my mother had found some small real-looking, battery-operated votive candles somewhere in the house, and Lily was taken with them. During the day she had played with them, and at some point, when I was not paying attention, had lined the back staircase with them, bringing more up to the bedroom where we've been sleeping, my childhood room. Then, she'd come back downstairs again, to play with something else, and forgot about the little votives she'd set about. But my mother had not.

When I went up to ready the room before bedtime, I rounded the corner to see that my mother had been there before me. She'd moved some of the lights so they still lined the stairs but had also set some in the hallway to the bedroom, lining the pathway. In the room itself, which was dark, she'd set small clusters in the window sills and by the walls, so the entire walk from the downstairs to the bedroom was lit with what appeared to be actual votive candles. It was lovely; it was magical.

Lily is quite taken with magic these days. She asked for, and received, a magic set for her birthday, and has been performing her own creative acts of magic, making herself disappear, under the carpet, for example. She has also become keen on what she sees as acts of magic in the world around her: snow, for example, a line of geese in flight, her ability to make Annika laugh and laugh. I didn't want to spoil this one.

I brought Annika up first, told Lily one more story. When we entered the room and Annika saw the lights, her little mouth pursed into an "O," and she turned in my arms to see my face. "Oh, oh!" she said, and when I placed her in her crib she stood up and walked its perimeter, noting all of the lights in the room. And then I came back down for Lily. Instead of walking her up as I typically would, I told her to go up by herself on the back stairs. I heard her sleeper-covered feet padding on the stairs, stopping at the landing, picking up speed in the hallway.

I walked around the other way, stopped at the top of the stairs where she stood in the doorway, her back to me. Annika was standing in the crib, smiling, pointing at the lights in the window. Lily turned to me, then, not technically in my arms, and her eyes were huge.

"It's like--" she started.

"I know," I said. She didn't have to say it.

Remember. Know.