Aunt Beauty
How beautiful are the
feet of them that preach the gospel of peace,
and bring glad tidings
of good things!
— Romans 10:15
My aunt, Nancy Dixon Miller, died recently after a long
battle with leukemia. She was strikingly beautiful in more ways than one.
She was a tall brunette with extravagant features,
Nebraska's version of Ava Gardner.
She was a beauty queen at the University of Nebraska. When I
was a little girl, I used to study the full-page, close-up photograph of her
face in the yearbook.
Those perfectly-arched eyebrows!
Those doe-like eyes!
Those full lips!
Wow! What a looker.
My uncle is a dashing, handsome fellow. In fact, we call him
"Uncle Ace." They were the perfect couple. Their two daughters and two sons are
all good-looking, and their grandchildren are all gorgeous. Not a single one of
them has a stuck-up bone in his or her body.
Like most of us, I'm fascinated by beautiful people. I like
knowing that some of them are beautiful on the inside, too. When I was in
college, members of our sorority were crowned Homecoming Queen three years in a
row. Ironically, it took each of them just two seconds to put on makeup. A
whisk of lipstick. That was it.
Ooh, that natural, rosy glow! Ooh, those perfect
proportions! That beautiful hair! Those eyes! But they never made the rest of
us jealous, because they were so gracious and humble about their giftedness.
That's how my aunt was, too. True beauty doesn't just sit
there, not even in an art museum. It interacts. It grabs you. When you see it
in people, it is alive and active, doing good for others. Beauty is supposed to
inspire, encourage, uplift and reach out. It has work to do, too.
Aunt Beauty worked hard, raising those four children. She
made darned good cheese potatoes. She had the best low-pitched chuckle. And
despite her schedule, she always dressed beautifully and had the best-looking
hair and fingernails.
In contrast to my aunt, I have freckles and a bunion. My
hair is iffy. My fingers are stubby. I kind of look like Boris Yeltsin in a
dress.
And one day, I was laying in a hospital bed, desperately
upset, about to cry.
Why? I had just given birth to our first child, a girl. I
should've been ecstatic. But instead of a tiny, delicate flower, she was a
moose: 10 pounds, 2 1/2 ounces.
I had visions of her growing up to be an even FATTER Boris
Yeltsin in a dress.
Compared to the newborn baby boys, she was huge. Little
bitty blue blanket, little bitty blue blanket . . . GREAT BIG PINK BLANKET!
Visitors to the hospital nursery would jab each other at the sight of her
bulging over her layette: "Edna! Get a load of THAT one!"
I know, I know, we females aren't supposed to even think
about our physical size and shape. That's not the real "us." It's
just the wrapper. But I couldn't help it. Looks are important. Every mother of
a new daughter wants the best for her, in every way.
My husband, my dad, my brothers and my uncle were all
visiting us in the maternity ward, gleefully making jokes about my daughter's
size. Meanwhile, I lay there getting a tight throat and starting to get tears
in my eyes . . . post-partum pathos.
"Ten pounds! What a lunker!
"Let's take her picture on the scales and put it in the
paper!"
"She can block for the Huskers!"
"What a truck!"
"She'll be palming a basketball in six months!"
Suddenly, Aunt Beauty cleared her throat. "Susie," she said,
in her beautiful, low voice. The men fell silent.
She continued: "Do you know, there's a teeny, tiny,
dainty, feminine little girl at the preschool where I work, and do you know how
much SHE weighed at birth? Ten pounds!"
Our eyes locked. She winked, ever so slightly. My quivering
lips curled up into a smile.
The men were silent and slack-jawed, just the way I like
'em. That was pretty beautiful.
But even better, Aunt Beauty turned out to be right. Our
"tank" of a baby girl is now all grown up and has a lovely face and
figure, not even a hint of Boris Yeltsin. She's blonde. But otherwise, she
takes after Aunt Beauty‚ the one who was a real looker . . . inside and out. †
