S is for Story

Addy and I were reading a book tonight called "A is for Africa" and when we turned to the Q page there was a young woman, sitting tall, wrapped in what looked like a large black and yellow and red striped blanket, a black turban wrapped upon her head and heavy red shell beads around her neck, the kind you might find these days hanging at an H&M jewelry aisle for $22. And she was barefoot, ten toes covered in red silt earth.

"She doesn't have glass slippers, does she?" I asked. Addy shook her head no. "See, queens and princesses come in all different kinds of colors and shapes and wear all different things."

Thinking, she said finally, "But do you think she's not as beautiful?" I was struck for a moment. I could feel the molding weight of my daughter's perception of beauty slipping in like a breeze through her night window.

"Look at her eyes. Do you see? She is telling us a thousand beautiful stories with her eyes. That is where beauty lies. We can see beauty when we look into someone's eyes and hear the stories they are trying to tell us." Addy looked at the woman on the page, the soft mystery in her gaze, a dark dove from a far away land. And then, she looked up at me. I saw her piecing my words together. In a strange way, between her and I, silence has become our tacit language of understanding, that the long pause between thoughts is itself a thought, light wings landing if given enough space.

She looked at me one more time before I turned the page to R to see that I hold in my eyes enough stories to fill a thousand bedtime nights.

After we finished the book, I kissed her goodnight and turned off the light, and against her open window I tried to trace the lingering shadow of the cool breeze into my memory. Remember, I told myself - look into her eyes every day and ask her to tell you all the beautiful stories you see in her, because it is what we see in others that they will see in themselves.

Tonight, that is what my daughter told me like a story in her eyes.