The photo book opens. Happy memories gush out, overflowing onto the table, they catch my eye and touch my heart. I know very well, the woman that smiles back at me from page five. I knew her when she stood five feet 6 inches tall beside me, not four by five inches as she is now, preserved in this album of captured love. Yes, I knew her when her curves were 3D, when her sound, her scent, her smile were a reality before me.
A beauty through and through, from ages zero till 92. She blessed the earth she walked on -blades of grass bowed down before she even took a step on them. The wind blew to embrace her. To describe her as beautiful would not be enough. I'm convinced her heart was so full of loveliness that it overflowed onto her surface. Even within these pages, she still catches many eyes.
Mine are drawn to her lines. My grandma's face spelled love in the lines that she etched there. Between her eyebrows, she held her worries, above them sat her sass. Around her mouth, she forged ridges from a lifetime of laughter and millions of kisses. But the lines that I'm most interested in are those beside her eyes. There, her soul took up the pencil.
These lines are tender, like the gaze with which her honey eyes held the world. They are riverbeds for tears of joy. They are the tails of shooting stars, evidence of her eyes' twinkle, her omnipresent obstinance to dream. They trace the strong cheekbones where my sleepy head used to plant a goodnight kiss and whisper, "I love you more." They zig-zag like her heartbeat, electrified whenever she caught a wink from her Don. They are the illustration of 92 years of wisdom.
I see my whole childhood, my hopes for who I'll someday be, and my strong family ties in those lines beside her eyes.
