Yes, I am proud of my daughter but there’s something bugging me.
“Can I have one more smile before I go?” he asked, his blue eyes twinkling, a wide grin plastered on his kind, weathered face.
Emi turned her head slightly to her left and shifted her own pair of bright blue eyes coyly back at her new friend. The corners of her mouth slowly turned upward. Checkmate. She had just delivered her ‘small smile’. It’s possibly the cutest one in her repertoire and not surprisingly, she now had this elderly gentleman in the palm of her squishy little hand.
He laughed and then turned to me, “you must be one proud mother!”
I froze. I wanted to ask him why? Why do you say that? I mean, of course I’m proud of her, but he had known us for maybe fifteen minutes all up and it wasn’t really what he said, it was the way he said it – with such conviction. As if he knew Emi and had been privy to all of her achievements to date.
I managed to stutter, “Ahhh yeah, I guess I am very proud of her.”
To which he responded, “she is just so beautiful – she is one gorgeous girl!”
So that was it. He felt that I should be proud of my daughter because she is beautiful. And she is – no doubt about it.
She’s been blessed with creamy, smooth skin and rosy, pink cheeks. Striking blue eyes and pretty little lashes that curl up from under her heavy lids. Her hair colour is somewhere between brown and blonde – it actually looks golden in the sunshine. Her eyebrows are perfectly formed, her pink lips full, and she has just the most delightful button nose I’ve ever seen. When she smiles, her eyes crinkle in the corners and she has a small dimple underneath her right cheek. Spunk.