On Beauty

I’m aware of how many treatises, poems and other written documents share this title, so I’ll make this quick.
Suzanne and I toured your possible daycare (if I can’t find freelance work by the time I need to go back to work) and the hospital where you’ll be born. Both visits were reassuring. Tad did embarrass me at the daycare by getting too eager to see a baby in a glider; he put his front paws up on the edge. I could understand why he was curious, but I hope I made it clear—at least for the moment—that he could not invade someone else’s kid’s space that way. You are another story. I expect you’ll be sniffed and licked many times over.
I left Tad at home for the hospital visit, which also went well. The nurse to whom my coworker introduced me was kind and had a lot of personality, which I think will be helpful during labor. She only said two things which I found mildly troubling, but I was so happy she was eager to help me to care for my baby and not to take him away that I forgave her. She told me that the first day, I should be allowed to room in with the baby but only if a sighted person was there. She went on to say that I would need to learn how to care for him, so I think she really meant an experienced person, but to equate sight with experience is annoying. Still I don’t know any blind experienced parents in this town, so a sighted one will work. And she also said the only thing she felt bad about my not seeing was that I wouldn’t know how cute you are, but she would be sure to tell me. To hear that from an outsider was jarring. I myself have fallen prey to that statement when I told James that it was a good thing he was blind and not sighted when we met, because he might not like me. I meant that I’m not particularly beautiful. Then again, who am I to make slurs on visual beauty, even with myself? It’s true that James might not have liked me, but it could have been for many other reasons, having as much to do with his baggage as a sighted person as anything else. My point is that that comment is pointless, because we didn’t meet then—we met later, and that made the difference. But I’ll know you’re beautiful without seeing you. I will appreciate any detail sighted people can give me about you, but I know you already. I’ll know you better than any of their eyes will know you. And you are beautiful.