Little Red Haired Girl

Buddha. Buddha I knew that looked wrong on the 23rd; I hate when that happens.

Ellen and I went to Charlottesville to see a band that we both like. It was a free show that started at 5:30, so we left here about 3:00 and made unbelievably bad time. Our first mistake was that I forgot a crucial step in the directions to the highway we needed. After that, bad Northern Virginia traffic took over. We made it just as Eddie From Ohio was starting the second set, it was a good time.

Charlottesville is a college town, the home of the University of Virginia. It is peopled with the young and freshly attractive; many of the folks who crowded into the outdoor amphitheatre were young families with soft gorgeous children. It was a muggy night and the kids ran all around the place.

There was one little girl, I can't get her face out of my mind. She was a toddler, maybe three years old. Her hair was deep red, it fell around her shoulders in soft messy waves; it seemed to dance, her hair did. Her face was porcelain pale and sprinkled with freckles. Her mouth was a little red rosebud poised to open; her eyes were smoky blue and so wide. She seemed to see everything.

She wore a little straw hat with flowers and sundress of blue cotton that almost matched her eyes.

This perfect little girl, she looked like a doll that an old woman would collect, but at the same time she was real. She stuck her fingers in her mouth; she ran and jumped and held her mother's hand.

I wondered what she'd look like when she grew up. Would she be able to appreciate her freckles and her beautiful hair? Would her eyes ever be so open and her mouth so closed as it was in that moment when I saw her?

How did the night look to her? The forest of legs, the sea of faces? How did the music feel? What were the pictures she made as they played and sang on the stage?

O, to see that way again for just one day.

before - after