Loverly

I had a rare (for these days) leisurely(ish) chat with Eleanor this afternoon. The boys & I had headed over to Ballantine Road to make salt dough ornaments and drink some expired chocolate milk Mom had picked up on the cheap at Sahara Mart. While we were waiting the two hours the ornaments needed to harden in the oven, Eleanor came in from work.

Conversation turned, as it does with us, to looks.  She asked me if I felt beautiful--conventionally beautiful. I said certainly not. I told her about being at a concert some years ago and seeing a woman in the choir who looked very much like me--everyone in my party noticed it. She wasn't beautiful, but somehow seeing a face rather like mine on someone else helped me make my peace with my own. If that's (sort of) what I look like, I can live with it.

What I didn't get out, though, is how my response to beauty has been changed by my children. I love to look at their faces so much that I lose all context, all possibility of reference to external standards. Are they beautiful children? I really haven't any idea. All I know is that I can look at them--their round, tender cheeks, the whorls of their hair,  their skinny shoulders and outrageously Greco-Roman buttocks (which, let's be clear, I see a lot of)--with the avidity with which I used to read fashion magazines or watch exquisite French movies. Their eyebrows--each boy's so different! so eloquent!--tell stories to me as good as Trollope's and Austen's.

Part of it, I guess, is pure vanity. I like what my children look like so much I can't help but warm up to me, to whom they bear some resemblance. But it's mostly not that, I think. I remember the breath almost being knocked out of me, just after Eleanor was born, when I realized that every single person I saw on the street or at the store or anywhere had been born, too--had arrived as extraordinary a visitation. I felt it was at least possible to love almost anyone, just because I loved Eleanor. And now when I look at other people, I am much more likely to see how beautiful they are, because I love so much to look at Henry and James.

Group portrait, with dog ears.