Of cloudless climes and starry skies

I look at her with the eyes of a third-grader at parent-teacher conference, both apprehensive and what she might be told and excited that all the boys in class wish--if only for today--they could be me. She wears her Studio54 jeans properly spray-painted to her body, and her high-heeled shoes; her jet black hair hangs shimmering all the way down to her waist. She is the personification of beauty. Were I older, I would know of lust and desire and understand the subtle power that she weilds like a scimitar.

But now she's 52, wearing her pijama top and his pijama bottoms. Her hair is a thinning mess of ear-short, dyed strands; her hands are covered in the suds of car-wash soap. Her face seems tired, her shoulders hang a bit too low, there's a nostalgic shine in her eye, as I play a new song by a Spanish group that plays the kind of music she remembers dancing to when polyester was the great new promise.

And when she laughs all her many years go away and I see only the young girl again who used to play with me at the park--the one I called Connie, not mom. So much love, so much pleasure in one simple smile. Her age will never reach her, as long as she keeps smiling.