Quick, before you miss it!

Life has distracted me, been out of it for awhile, need to reconnect to the keyboard and the brain for a few minutes. Well, five actually. With the GypsyMama. While the nearly-2-year-old plays angry birds.

Beauty...

She has shiny black dots on her arm, remants of a temporary tattoo. To be fair, remnants of several temporary tattoos. She demands fingernail polish, in shades of blue and green, and her daddy gives it to her. She returns the favor (on his toes). Her hair is wild, she won't let you touch it, and she always needs a hand free to keep it from her face.

When they see her, it's the eyes they notice first: wide and brown and lashes the length of I-70 across Kansas. Then her dimples, not in her cheeks, but under those big brown eyes. Then her laugh, her smile, then her speed.

Because she won't let you look at her long. She's too busy, too fast, too mature for such trivial things as the outstanding beauty of a 4-year-old girl on fire for life. But when she does let me see her, I see me. And I get a glimpse - for just a second - through the eyes of my own mother. And I hope when she saw my beauty, she saw hers, as well.

Can you see it? Your beauty through the eyes of others?