She Was Beautiful

 

Suzanne Reynolds
 

SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL....
.... but she didn't know what that meant.
When she was a little girl they told her she was beautiful
but it had no meaning in her world of bicycles and pigtails
and adventures in make-believe.

Later, she hoped she was beautiful  as boys started taking notice
of her friends and phones rang for Saturday night dates.
She felt beautiful on her wedding day,
hopeful with her new life partner by her side

but, later,  when her children called  her beautiful,
she was often exhausted,  her hair messily tied back,
no make up, wide in the waist where it used to be narrow;
she just couldn't take it in.

Over the years, as she tried, in fits and starts, to look beautiful,
she found other things  to take priority, like bills and meals,
as she and her life partner worked hard to make a family,
to make ends meet,to make children into adults,
to make a life.

Now, she sat. Alone.
Her children grown, her partner flown,
and she couldn't remember the last time she was called beautiful.

But she was.
It was in every line on her face, in the strength of her arthritic hands,
the ampleness that had a million hugs imprinted
on its very skin, and in the jiggly thighs and
thickened ankles that had run her race for her.
She had lived her life with a loving and generous heart,
had wrapped her arms around so many to give them comfort and peace.

Her ears had  heard both terrible news
and lovely songs, and her eyes
had brimmed with, oh, so many tears, they were now bright even as they dimmed.

She had lived and she was.

And because she was,
she was made beautiful.
~ Suzanne Reynolds, © 2019