She’s Got the Whole World in Her Head

With new gel pens and an open notebook, I armed myself for some brainstorming so I’d be ready when Talia came over to help me put a new plan together. I walked around the house with the brainstorm cloud hovering over my head, my toes squooshing into the carpet like roots trying to pull ideas out of the ground. After months of working so hard on the old plan, it was hard not to get discouraged. So many people were counting on me. I was counting on me.

What could I possibly do in one weekend that would be worthy of winning? Worthy of Cecilia?

I wandered out into the living room where the baby slept in her mechanical swing, Mom, Dad, and Nonny nearby in the kitchen chatting about their days. Pacing back and forth kept the blood flowing, kept me feeling like I was trying something, even if the idea sparks seemed to slip away as soon as I saw them.

I tried lying down on the floor and staring up at the ceiling. I tried lying on the couch upside down. I did jumping jacks and played my stomach like a drum. The big idea door had closed, but there had to be a cracked window somewhere, right?

Where did plans and ideas come from, really, anyway? Maybe ideas were recipes the same way our bodies were. Recipes of the things we did and the people we knew and the stuff we learned. Every person’s brain had ingredients other people’s didn’t. Nonny’s brain had piano and babies and a special way of talking to friends on the phone. Mom’s had the best pineapple upside-down cake in the world, and Ms. Trepky … well, Ms. Trepky’s brain had a whole lot of stuff, which was probably why she was a teacher.

And Cecilia Payne’s brain had held stars.

What about mine? What did I have to work with? I looked around the living room, this time as if everything from the side table to the smell of roast coming from the kitchen was a potential ingredient for a fantabulous new idea.

Baby Cecilia was awake. Wide awake, staring at me with her round brown eyes. Her hands clasped and unclasped, and she watched me like everything I was and everything I did was exciting and utterly brand new, which, to her, it was. What must it be like to have a brain like that, so open and filling with bright new bursts every second? A whole universe inside there, growing. This Cecilia had stars, too.

Cecilia’s brain had stars.

Her brain had stars.

That was it. That was it! I froze in front of baby Cecilia, staring back at her, letting the idea settle in and take root before I moved too much and jostled it loose. Neither baby Cecilia nor I blinked while I watched the idea whirl around and form into something I could see.

The idea was audacious, oh yes. And it was going to work.