Our Daughters
I needed a moment, so I turned off the causeway to sit and look out over the water.
No wind or clouds under a deep Azul sky. Two lovers in chairs within my view on their own private sandbar.
She got out of an SUV to my right and walked in front of my truck, her expression heavy with serious intentions.
From another vehicle to my left a photographer emerged, greeted her, they both walked to the edge of the water.
Her first expression, a smile ,then a tease of her hair, a look of seduction, then another smile.
The photo-shoot ended. They shook hands, parted, then she walked to her chauffeur ready with an open door.
Emily wanted to be a model. She practiced poses, gestures, experimented with hair and make-up. Her room, her sanctuary of vivid dreams, her life lived out in fantasy every day after school. Staring at the mirror. Then starring into the mirror, becoming her future vision of someone else's dream girl.
She was very thin that day when I began to pay attention. My delinquency always justified by my providing. Here was my girl, my baby, to thin, and I watched her absorb her perceived reflection in the mirror. Her words, “Hey Dad, Do I look beautiful?” I smiled, then thought about her mother on the west coast, wondered if she would ever come back.
The model, brunette, petite, someone’s fantasy will be on a page in a magazine. Someone, some young person, with a real life ahead of their dreams, nested in a family that poorly expresses their love will say “She’s lovely, I wish I could look like that.”
