This is What Beautiful Feels Like
You know that type of beauty that stops you in your tracks? It has nothing to do with gender or age, and it’s way beyond cheekbones or wide set eyes. It is something about the face, but it’s not aesthetic at all. Maybe it’s the expression, something behind a person’s eyes, or maybe it’s just that feeling you get — that intuitive force of emotional energy deep inside your chest. You can feel the weight of it as it grows — stretching upward like a giant hand, desperately trying to find a way out. Most of the time it just gets stuck at the base of your throat, like you just tried to swallow your own fist. But other times, it keeps punching and punching until it forces itself through to freedom, only to to turn around and slap you straight in the face. This is the experience I had a few days ago as I was getting on the bus on my way to work. One minute I was thinking about my ten o’clock appointment and the next minute my brain screamed, “Stop everything and look at that woman!”
“She’s beautiful.”
She was sitting to my left, gazing out the window as I walked by, oblivious to the world around her — a black woman, older, maybe in her late 60s or early 70s with salt and pepper hair, cut short. She wore a gray, herringbone cap and an ivory-colored shawl that covered her entire chest. I had never seen her on the bus before. She seemed out of place, otherworldly almost, like she belonged somewhere else — in a painting, maybe, or a black and white photo hanging on the wall of an expensive gallery.
I had this incredible urge to do something as I walked by, to act on that intense burst of emotion I felt when I saw her face. Instead, I passed right by her and sat down a few rows back, on the other side of the aisle, as if nothing incredible had just happened at all. I could only see the back of her head from where I was sitting.
That feeling, though. It didn’t go away. It moved from my gut into my throat. I thought about yelling, “You’re very beautiful!” in her direction but that’s a weird thing to yell out spontaneously, especially on a bus. She might take it the wrong way. I thought about tapping her on the shoulder and whispering in her ear but in order to do that, not only would I have to invade her personal space, I would also have to stand up and take a few steps forward, up the aisle. People would look. People would wonder.
What if she didn’t know how beautiful she was? The urge to do something was overwhelming. I couldn’t have been the only one on the bus to notice her that day. She was stunning. She probably didn’t even know about the twinkle of sunlight dancing in a circle on her cheekbones — an echo of a much more complex and profound light that began somewhere deep inside of her and radiated outward. What if she had no idea how meaningful it was to be touched by the glow of her essence? At some point the pressure building inside me reached the point of no return. I decided I would write it down and hand it to her before I got off the bus, so I pulled a little notebook out of my purse and I wrote the following:
“I just wanted to tell you that you are a stunningly beautiful woman and I don’t mean that in a weird way…”
I was going to write an additional sentence that would have read, ”It was just the first thing I noticed when I got on the bus and I felt compelled to tell you,” but as I was writing the first sentence, she reached up and pulled on the bell. I knew had to hurry, so I ripped out the page, folded in half and leaped up the aisle to catch her before she reached the door.
“Ma’am,” I said, “I have to give you this.”
She eyed me suspiciously as I held the note in front of her. I responded with the least-creepy smile I could muster. Unfortunately, trying to smile in a non-creepy way has a desperate tone, and I’m pretty sure that defeats the purpose. I have to give you this? I did not HAVE to give her this and now the whole bus is watching me pressure this woman into accepting my rambling message torn from a lint-covered notebook.
She looked down at the note I was holding, then sideways back at me, then down at the note again before reaching out her hand in slow motion and finally accepting it. I turned abruptly when it left my hand and beelined it back to my seat.
A wave of relief washed over me. There. It’s done. I watched as she stepped off the bus and onto the sidewalk.
But it wasn’t done. The bus was just sitting there with it’s blinker on, waiting for the traffic to go by. I watched as she maneuvered her way through a small group of people, turned right and started walking down the sidewalk until she reached the middle of the bus. Just a pane of glass and a row of empty bus seats were between us then. I took a deep breath before I turned my head toward her. Her face softened as soon as she opened the note. I watched her close her eyes, and smile slightly as she folded it back in half. She lifted her head toward my seat on the bus and that’s when our eyes really met for the first time.
Her smile filled me with warmth — a full smile this time, teeth and all. She took my breath away. She raised her hand toward me slowly, then held it there with her palm facing out. I was doing the same.
We stayed like that as the bus pulled away, smiling and holding our hands out to each other while the rest of the world fell away. In that one incredible moment we both understood what beautiful feels like.
