The Ugly Child

                                                                                       

A woman walked up the steps of a house, a child following closely behind her.  The steps were quite steep, and the child little more than three or four-- and so the child climbed slowly, placing each small foot with great care...  The woman disappeared inside the door, and still the child climbed.  Just as she reached the very last step, her tiny sandal, so scuffed and worn, caught on the stair's edge and she fell.  O traitorous shoe!  O uncaring bricks!  Bitterly the child cried,as children are apt to do.  Carefully she examined her little knee so bloody, her tiny toe with the nail so cruelly torn off...

Suddenly the woman appeared in the doorway--with her hands on her hips she stood, looking down at the sobbing child.  "YOU ARE SO UGLY!" the woman said.  "I wish you could see yourself--you ugly little thing!"  And with that pronouncement, the woman turned her back on the child and briskly walked away. 

The child blinked in astonishment and slowly rose from the steps.  Quietly she limped  to the bedroom at the end of the hall, where a gold-framed mirror hung high above her head.  Tears gone now, the child climbed upon a wooden chair and gazed at her reflection with wonder--until that very moment, she had not known that she was ugly. 

The woman was my mother.  The child was me...