IGM Wives and Daughters

Inter-Galactic Memo

To: All Personnel

Fr: W. Leavitt

Re: Wives and Daughters

7-8-2010

I have three daughters, and a son. This will be mostly about my wife and daughters, but I promise to say something nice about Grah in the future. It will be easy to do.

For forty years, off and on, at random moments, I will catch a glimpse of Nita, and she will take my breath away. My heart jumps in my chest. It still happens. She surpasses my understanding. Her beauty is inextricably tied to who she is, and her character cannot help but shine through into the outer world.

This is not always the case with human beings. (I will use Lindsey Lohan as exhibit A).

Perhaps I am able to see something no one else does. Although she has always been well-regarded by males, who have hovered around her with silly, surreptitious and hopeless longing.

And ever since my daughters became young women, and now simply women, the same thing happens, occasionally, when I look at them. It amazes me how much a momentary glance can speak so much of them to me. I see dedicated mother, and caregiver, student, teacher, artist, devoted wife (and girlfriend), and so many other things.

I see good. Honor, integrity, sacrifice—all the same things I have always seen in Nita. And in my daughters, the gestalt of these traits combine to create a rare kind of beauty often missing in the faces of women internationally known for a different, and lesser, kind of splendor.

Each has her own peculiar aspect. A radiance, an ethereal, inner glow that manifests with a turn of the head, in a stray beam of light, or a gentle shadow.

Aubrey, with decades of wisdom and love beyond her years in her eyes. A kind of celestial countenance shining through.

Jessica with that naturally blonde hair, that skin, and those eyes, with a mother’s love burning eternally in them.

Chani, with her crazy make-up and hair color of the week, that sparkle, that elfin smile.

And Nita, with . . . everything. Forever eyes. A whole set of smiles only I ever see. A tenderness and dedication beyond reason, beyond imagination.

A man should not be allowed such fortune; it is unfair to those with lesser beauty in their lives. But there it is, and nothing I can do about it.

And already I can see the same exquisite grace growing like a special blessing in my granddaughters. Naomi, the Gelfling Princess, Ellie, the wide-eyed gypsy-girl, Caroline, my perfect little shadow, with a smile that defines mischievous, Salem, the dark-eyed gift from another dimension, Cecily, whose beauty is so radiant, and intense, she retains its perfection even when frowning, or crying, or angry, and Tesla, so small and new, and already extraordinary, with the same other-worldly looks of her sister.

When—no, if—I find myself in a personal interview with Heavenly Father, the first thing I will ask Him is, why me? What did I do to deserve such singular people in my life, to be so well-loved by such completely beautiful women and girls? I don’t have a clue, but it must have been something pretty good.