Beautiful

Yesterday Astrid took my face between her hands and started playing with my hair. She smoothed my hair around my face and said, "beautiful." I was quite taken aback. A compliment from my 2 year old daughter...wow! (and something I haven't heard in a long time) so it really touched me.

Then today I was listening to Luciano Pavarotti sing Ave Maria with Astrid and when I saw that she was enamored with it I said, "It's beautiful isn't it?" Her response was a heartfelt, "Yeah" and then more requests to hear it "Again! Again!".

Which reminds me of a poetic quote from the Amy Tan book, "Saving Fish from Drowning" (which I posted before, but it's worth mentioning again) about how mothers are the ones who teach children about (happiness) and beauty.

"A mother is one who fills your heart in the first place. She teaches you the nature of happiness: what is the right amount, what is too much, and the kind that makes you want more of what is bad for you. A mother helps her baby flex her first feelings of pleasure. She teaches her when to later exercise restraint, or to take squealing joy in recognizing the fluttering leaves of the gingko tree, to sense a quieter but more profound satisfaction in chancing upon an everlasting pine. A mother enables you to realize that there are different levels of beauty, and therein lie the sources of pleasure, some of which are popular and ordinary, and thus of brief value, and others of which are difficult and rare, and hence worth pursuing."