In The Eye of the Beholder

When I was a wee poppet, I knew beauty. It was the wonderfully fuzzy face of my 'saidy'. (I could not say 'Teddy') Saidy was all brown and soft and his big kind eyes were pools of acceptance and would, inspite of the fact that he had no batteries, light up when he saw me. Ah, 'Saidy' 'Saidy Bear' were are you now?

The face of beauty changed when I grew a little older and went into a penny candy store for the first time. I was surrounded by a beauty that would entrance me for a very long time. Beauty of colour. Beauty of flavour. Wow. Amazing.

The teen years were more about the beauty of form. It didn't matter much who's form, once past gender, any glimpse of flesh. A shirt pulled up. Summer pants cut a little short. Ah how a little injection of hormone can leave one all but forgetting innocent little 'Saidy Bear'.

For me young adulthood then found beauty in the crafting of a home with one of those wide shouldered, strong jawed type of hotties that I'd managed to capture, if not by hook at least by crook. We manufactured a life where in we found beauty in art, in literature, in conversation. A more mature form of the appreciation of the beauty of a life of everything shared. A life made beautiful because you can play that fun tickle game whenever you want.

But we have entered into another phase of the understanding of beauty. We are staying, right now, in a huge resort north of Toronto. It's on the way to the consultation and will cut our driving down by several hours. We decided, what the heck treat ourselves. Into a huge lobby, up to a luxurious room. Wow. Then Joe went into the bathroom and said, breathlessly like he has when listening to Madama Butterfly or contemplating a painting by Turner or finishing a book by Furst or by watching that nude scene in A Single Man ... it's, it's, beautiful.

I wheeled myself over and took a glance. My hand went to my throat, it was ... spectacular. Tall toilet, bars everywhere. Both a roll in shower and a bathtub. Lowered sink area for shaving. If you took a picture of this and put it as a centerfold in 'Senior's Today' I think you'd have people slipping off to private areas just to ogle it's features.

Beauty for children may be teddy bears and chocolate. But for the rest of your life, beauty will be some form of plumbing. Your's. Your partner's. Your bathrooms.'