“Watch your head,” Brooke calls out from the crawl space door to her daughter. Rose was climbing into the attic to retrieve an old ballet costume that was her sisters. “What?” Rose called back to her mother, turning her head to look back. “A beam!” Her mother shouted back, but it was too late. A thud, a crumble to the floor, and rose held her head as she folded into herself quietly sobbing as her mother slunk away to leave her there.

When rose’s mother was pregnant with Lilly, she hadn’t yet received word she was having a girl when she purchased the ballet outfit from the back of a little boutique off park ave. She just had a feeling, a feeling of happiness exploding inside her. She was right of course, and her happiness seemed to double each second she was with her Lilly. She and her husband would often just stare at her creation, content to stay like this forever, but of course, nothing is forever.

“A beam.” Rose’s mom was suddenly cast out from her daydream as she turned to the doctor. “What?” She asked the doctor. He sighed, “you asked how the radiation works, it uses a beam.” “Oh,” she whispered as she turned back to look at Lilly, her husband rubbing her back. Lilly was wrapped in a blanket and snuggled into her mother’s lap, smiling with so much joy, completely unaware of her own circumstances.

Lilly never got to wear her ballet costume. Shortly after her death, her mother instructed her husband to tuck it away in the attic along with all her hope for happiness. Grief burgeoned inside her heart. Even after the birth of her second daughter, Brooke struggled to feel happiness again. Post partum depression consumed her, she didn’t bond to Rose in the way she had bonded with Lilly. Rose wasn’t a smiling baby. In fact, she had a grumpy cat look that even strangers felt compelled to tease her about. Brooke found herself treading water in life, just trying to get through.

As she grew, she learned to smile, but Brooke wondered if she was truly happy or just learned the behavior to smile when it was appropriate. It didn’t matter to her, because she was just as sad, and had her mind made up that none of them would ever feel happiness ever again.

A beam of light shined onto the purple curtains that hung on the stage of Rose’s dance school. As the curtains opened, 3 tiny ballerinas giggled as they pranced around the enormous stage. The audience cooed and laughed while they danced. Brooke squinted her eyes to get the clearest picture of her daughter. She could hardly believe it, because she had never seen her daughter emit so much joy.

“A beam,” Rose’s mother whispered to her husband, Banks. “What?” He asks while still watching his daughter. “Look at her smile, I’ve never seen her so happy!” Banks quietly chuckled, never taking his eyes off Rose. Rose’s mother took Bank’s hand and tucked her head onto his shoulder. She sighed a big breath and exhaled her sadness into the ocean of laughter and applause. A tiny poke of happiness pierced into Brooke’s heart in that moment, and in the next second it grew a bit.

A ballerina costume. A beam.