What is the most beautiful smile you've ever seen?

Mine: My college was built into a forest on a hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean. You had to take pathways from building to building, through the forest. Early one morning I was heading to class. I passed a girl on the path. She had some degenerative disease, MS perhaps, the kind that whittles away your muscle control. She had two crutch type things, one for each hand. Her walk was very gangly and uncooridinated. It was a struggle for every step. As we passed our eyes met and she shot me an incredible life-affirming smile at me. I mean her whole face lit up and beamed. She sucked in a deep breath and her head tilted back. I guess I'll remember that smile for the rest of my life.

Denzel Washington has the most perfect smile I have ever seen!

I was in the room with my best friend when she delivered her baby boy. He is 9 now, but that moment, seeing her smile at him, will always be one of my favorite memories.

my ex, when she held my step-sister's baby...

has a beautiful smile.

a knowing innocence...

She looks as if she's got secrets that you'd love to know about.

My younger son. He doesn't smile often. He is very reserved. But when he does, his whole person lights up.

And any smile from a child. Any child.

for 24 hours or so she was a wide eyed, blue-eyed baby that (being the first for her mom and i) was a totally unique experience. She arrived 9am after a whole wide awake nite of labor and then the whole day she and mom slept,fed,slept some more and late ( i mean like 3-4 am) i was still awake and found her awake, so i took her to the living room with me, and was holding her and talking to her. Mostly non-sensical stuff, baby talk i guess. And out of the blue, she gave me a sweet, serene smile that i have never forgotten. I knew then she recognized my voice, knew who i was, and would always be able to get whatever she wanted with that smile.

She's 19 now, still kicks my butt with her smile, her wit, and sometimes still acts like a child....

her sister otoh, she's more like me. She stares me down and rebuts my every arguement quite effectively. Independent and stubborn. My mirror.... but that's another story. And she smiles like the sun, always.

dp

I don't have children, but I have always imagined that's what it would be like.

You don't know how much she has me wrapped around her finger. My whole family including my extended family are nothing but males. I wanted a daughter so badly, it hurt, so you can imagine how I felt when she came along. And then add to it she took all her mother's good looks, well, she can barely do wrong in my eyes.

I also have a son that will make you laugh yourself silly. He's such a crazy, but loving kid.

but that is precious

She is my darling...

there's nothing else like it.

they are both attractive people, handsome, sexy, whatever. but the times when you catch them having a genuine laugh, it really is beautiful.

About 7am in the morning, end of March in Aberdeen. She was staying with me for a few days. We'd gone to bed kina late, and both woken up (as you do) when a seagull landed on the roof, skidded down and brained itself on my skylight window.

After looking at it, she rolled over, looked at me, smiled and then fell asleep holding me.

That smile will be the end of me.

She was two, and when I'd left the house that day to spend some time with a friend, she was fine, playing, eating jelly beans. She loved jelly beans. She'd had a bit of a sniffle earlier, but then she always had sniffles it seemed.

I was late getting home because the war had started, or more exactly the bombing of Baghdad and various locations all over Iraq and Kuwait. My friend and I were captivated by the fact we could sit there and watch it on television and listen to Bernard Shaw give us a play by play. His roommate came home, and we all watched it together, talking randomly about what it meant in the long run, whether there would be a draft, how many would end up being killed, what would happen if Israel got drawn into it.

At some point, the phone rang. It was my mother. I needed to come home, she said, and right now. I asked why. She said, "Just come."

So I sped home, fearing something had happened to Grandma, who was only recently out of the hospital. I knew Mom wouldn't want to tell me something horrible on the phone, but my imagination had it all worked out. But when I got there, my mom met me in the driveway, with grandma, and said we needed to go the hospital. Erin, my daughter, had had a seizure and fallen unconscious after developing a fever that spiked to 105 the last time they checked it. It had all happened within about an hour.

"The world is coming to an end," is all I thought. People are being killed by my government. We're about to be engaged in a great bloodbath, and to top it all off, my daughter is dying.

My wife and I sat with my daughter all night and the next day, alone, having run out the rest of the family who were doing nothing to make the situation any better. I looked at my daughter. I watched the television. My wife cried. I cried. And then, at some point the next morning, as I was rubbing her head, my daughter woke up. She looked at me, said "Hi, Daddy," and smiled.

It told me everything would be okay, and I'll never forget it.

.

She is my angel from heaven.