The young man at the door asked bashfully if she wouldn’t mind having her picture taken holding the dozen red roses he’d just delivered from the local florist – bashful because she was beautiful, as were the flowers, and, well, would she mind?
She smiled, and said “Why, of course!”
Her eyes were so dark, green, but perhaps brown, for the delivery guy was color blind and could not tell.
But he could tell this – in fact, he thought only the blind could not see what he saw – when she smiled, as she was smiling now, holding those red roses in her arms, she was strikingly beautiful.
There were laugh lines at both her eyes and her mouth that would probably suggest to most her age, but to the young fellow at her door, the sweetness of her face, the tilt of her head, the black-roots grey hair swept to the side, to him her appearance clearly revealed a special sort of happiness, no doubt a reflection of her heart.
She waited patiently, a knowing twinkle in her green – maybe brown – eyes, as he fumbled with his camera.
Finally, photo taken, the young delivery man from the local florist shop turned to go but then from the bottom step he looked back at the lovely sight of the woman, still standing there, still smiling, holding the dozen red roses in her arms.
“Someone must really love you,” he said.
“Someone does,” and she smiled that smile again.
‘I love my job,’ he said aloud even though there was nobody to hear as his delivery van merged with traffic.
‘Sure, the beauty of those roses will fade, but somehow I think when a woman is loved like that, her beauty never will.’
