Her words, intoxicating and sweet, yet the voice invoking them scraped at my mind with its haggard gasps.

My mother was never a young woman. I never knew her when she was "beautiful Leila", the woman my father spoke of so wistfully. She was always this. This sad shell, decaying and distant even when personable.

My father was a young man, twenty-one years her junior when the first and only child of the two was born. The doctors swore that having a child at 53 was a horrid idea, not to mention nearly unheard of even in this day of medical miracles. Of course, they were astounded that she had managed to get impregnated at all. I suppose at the back of their minds was the question of why this 32 year old man, gravel voiced and handsome, had chosen to marry and have children with a woman so much his senior. But he did, and they delivered an exuberant flame haired baby girl 7 months later. After an exhausting and nearly fatal delivery, Leila could only sigh the word "Glory"...the sigh which became my name.

I wasn't an easy child. I know this. My mother's health deteriorated quickly after I was borne. It was never said, but the thought always hung thick. I was the cause of the this. I was the reason my mother receded into a frail excuse for a life. I do not mean this in a manner of emotion; for she was a benevolent spirit. Leila was the kind of woman who could move you with a word, a touch, a simple look of knowing.

It amazes me that my father is the one who couldnt handle the turnabout. Even when my mother assured him that some parts of her will never change... never die, he only seemed in a constant state of unrest.

Is it sufficient(or even accurate?) to say he held a quiet hatred of me?

In retrospect, I do not remember a day that the words, "I love you" passed his lips. There was not one frame of memory in which he held his arms out to me, or even kissed me goodnight. Of course, little Glory thinks nothing of this, as she has no comparison.

My father was a man who held but one constant in his life.. his love of Leila. For this, I can forgive and understand his contempt of me.

Some things cannot be penned into mere words. Leila had a way with life. Never has there been a woman more capable of bestowing such thresholds of warmth, comfort, understanding, and love the way my mother did with just a touch...a spoken phrase. All of this is not overshadowed by the distance she keeps; likely to protect her own heart. She is not the kind to devalue your emotions by calling attention to her own.

I did not inherit this, but I am blessed with the gift of recognizing it.

Father died nine sharp years from the day of my birth. Leila did not cry. She spoke, unblinking, of fires burning themselves out, of the slowest burning embers being those that edure.

Somehow she lived pleasantly, among dense brown walls and mismatched quilts, until the day her embers found nothing left to burn.

At this, I cannot cry. Harmony isn't always a thing of beauty, but the sound of Glory.