What Beauty is to Me

This is what beauty is to me. These curled dark eyelashes that touch her eyebrows, the tiny vein at the corner of his eye. How deep set her eyes are, how wide set his are. They are different. They are the same. They are mine.

It is the way she looks at me when she nurses, and how he puts his hand on her face, how he loves her just like I do. I love these babies.

I am enjoying the view of the world today, for
the second day in a row, of the walls of my house. Liam has croup and so we're in for the day, again. I guess we don't really have four walls. If I count the actual walls of my little, additioned, gabled house, I guess there are actually 14 different walls. But outside of them looks pretty exciting to me right now.

Believe it or not this is only my second quarantine since Liam was born. He has never been sick before, except one stomach bug when he was almost 2. It lasted a day. He really hasn't even ever had a bad cold. This is the first time he's even ever coughed on a regular basis. In almost 4 years. I think this is a god somewhere saying, "Sorry about that first child. I'll make this one extra healthy to make up for it." Aoife, too, has lucked out. She has had a few runny noses and one pukey bug but that's it. I am hoping that excessive nursing will keep this one out of her system.

Anyhow, to entertain myself today, I took pictures of the children. Is there anything, I mean anything, more beautiful than your own children? Do you ever wonder what your children really look like? I mean what they look like to other people? I find myself looking at my two living ones and thinking, they could be the homeliest little creatures in the world and I would never suspect it. But I would be pretty surprised if they really were homely. Because look!

How could this be anything but beauty?

There's nothing wrong with a little quarantine every now and again.