She is 17 and beautiful, not just on the outside, with her dark hair and Snow White complexion and her perfect teeth, which never needed braces; but on the inside where it counts.
She has always been beautiful: interested in other people, careful about their feelings, warm, considerate, a smiling, sweet, loving, gentle, wonderful girl.
Read MoreThey told me I wouldn't like the movie. Too corny, the 21-year-old said. Too predictable, the 15-year-old added.
They had been disappointed so I assumed I would be, too. But I wasn't. I loved "Forever Young." It was a trip into yesterday, a love story, not a sex story, corny and predictable, yes, but who cares? It was tender instead of lewd. Imagine that in the 1990s!
Prior to the movie, I'd overheard a conversation. A girl, no more than 20, home from college for Christmas, was telling some friends about a guy she'd picked up at a New Year's Eve party. They were strangers who met around 11 p.m. and were bed partners a few hours later.
Read MoreThe woman was hassled. You could see it in her eyes, in the way they darted about the place, and in her footsteps, quick and impatient, eager to keep walking past. But the storefront intrigued the little girl at her side. "What does the sign say, Mommy?" the child asked. "It says, `All items $1,"' the woman explained. "You mean everything in that store costs a dollar?" the child said.
"That's right," the mother replied.
Read MoreThis is the way it was supposed to be: The neighbors would be gathered in the driveway and he would appear, his car just polished, and he would step out of it, dressed in a white tuxedo jacket holding roses that he bought for her. He would ring the bell, and her mother would answer and he would walk into the front hall and there she'd be, poised at the top of the steps, a vision in satin and lace. Her beauty would make him shy, suddenly, and he would tremble a little putting the corsage on her wrist…
Read MoreThere are people who reach out to others just because
There she is, not his wife, not his daughter, not any blood relation, caring for him, cleaning his house, shopping for his food, taking him back and forth to the doctor, then to the hospital, giving him time she doesn't have. She has two young children and works two jobs. But she does all this not because she has to, but because she wants to…
Read MoreEveryone should have an Aunt Fran. Even the name has a nice ring - Aunt Fran. It sounds friendly, yet elegant…
Read MoreThe Patriot Ledger
Beverly Beckham
Mary and Billy on their wedding day
And here they are 40 years later.
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