Beatrice is moody. She is sensitive. But I don’t want to use either of those words with her. Whenever I start to say, “You are being oversensitive,” I bite my tongue and would swallow it if I could because that’s what my parents said to me–again and again. I felt as though something was wrong with me. They were so cool, so calm. They never had outbursts. As an only child, there was no one to compare my emotional temperature to. With only Thomas around, Bea doesn’t really have much of a gauge either. Thomas is either hot or cold, thrilled with the world or pissed off, awake or sound asleep. Thomas doesn’t do grey. But Bea and I live in gradations of grey.

For seven, she’s amazingly attuned to herself. It’s a gift I’m trying to help her appreciate and nurture. I want her to understand that knowing one’s emotions, no matter how complicated or disarming they are, is a rare talent. It’s easy to interpret this skill–emotional intelligence, I guess you’d call it now–as an indication of freakdom, but I want her to value it.

Bea makes me wonder if this is a skill we’re born with. When she was three, trying to understand the crying jags that would occasionally beset her, she said, “Mama, sometimes rain falls in buckets from my eyes.” Wow. I practically ran to my journal to write that one down. Self-knowledge and poetry.

The other day, walking home from a friend’s house, she looked glum. 

“What’s up?” I angled, gingerly.

“There’s a lot of sadness inside of me.” I nodded and put an arm around her, believing that sometimes this is a better response than any explanation. I know from my own bouts with sadness, that words are too often empty.

Later that night in bed, she started crying, seemingly at nothing.

“Mama,” she gulped for air, “now the sadness is on the outside of me.”

I kissed her forehead and rubbed her back. She has such a hard time going to sleep — just like me as a kid. I want to do better by her than anyone did by me. My parents just told me to stay in bed “no matter what,” and when they asked a doctor for advice, he recommended wine mixed with milk — unethical, yes, but also really, really gross.

So I rub her back and try to make her aware of how her body is jumping around. I do Reiki on her or sit next to her in meditation. She sips valerian tea and tries to breathe into her belly. I don’t know if any of this does much good, but I hope she might eventually build a toolbox of sleep aids that outstrip Ambien.

This night, she rolls over, away from my rubbing hand to face me. In the dark room, I can just see her big eyes and cupid mouth.

“I’m worried there’s something wrong in my body that’s making me so sad.”

I know what she means. Almost every day, I can feel a weight in my chest. It moves from near my collarbone down to that triangular space at the top of the rib cage that you learn to identify when doing CPR. It’s a dull ache, and when I visualize it, I see a black and blue hole that can’t be filled because it goes to infinity. I don’t want my daughter to have a hole like this. More than anything, I want her to feel full. And yet, I love her all the more for being able to understand this mind-body connection and to be brave enough to give it voice.

“Your body is fine, honey,” I tell her. “You’re taking good care of your body and your mind and your heart. But sometimes that’s hard work. It can wear a person out.”

She nods and then kisses me. I love the way she kisses – full on the lips, like a tiny, ardent lover. She’s told me that she knows most kids don’t kiss their moms this way, but she says she doesn’t care. She curls up next to me, her hair tickling my shoulder, and within a few more minutes, she is asleep.

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