Beauty Is in the Eye

There was a young woman I knew a long time ago. She had lank brown hair, her clothes were misshapen and out of style.  Her mother was dead, her father a loner who ran a small business with only marginal success. She was shy and spoke rarely, her posture was stooped.  I remember that the single most striking thing about her was her utter lack of confidence. Pregnant at sixteen, she left high school. About two years later I was across the street from a park and saw her with a young child. The little boy held out his arms and ran across the grass to her, laughing and calling “Mama, mama,” and looking at her like she was the most beautiful person in the world. She smiled, beaming at the child and truly she was absolutely beautiful. I never saw her again.