When I was a little girl, I wanted to be paper thin and pretty and foolish. It seemed to me like the world just laid down flat and let pretty folk walk all over it, while the rest of us had to pick our way around them. I learned, early on, that my body took up too much space than was desireable; that my nose and forehead were unnaturally big; and my overdeveloped brain made me "too smart" for my age.

When I read Pecola in The Bluest Eye, I read myself. I didn't want blonde hair or blue eyes, but I wanted to be pretty -- desperately. Even now as an adult, minus the thick glasses and secondhand clothing, I'm conscious of an unquenchable need for physical validation.

Seeing Toni Morrison tonight, I envisioned all my childhood yearnings embodied in the person of one woman. When she opened her mouth, I half expected to hear a boom like God from the sky and not her gentle voice, somewhat self-conscious and prone to girlish laughter.

Writing, I always thought, was heavy stuff. But I'm beginning to think that most of the heaviness is likely what the reader brings to the page. I've been learning lately that a writer writes best with love and generosity and laughter. I suppose that is true for Morrison.

What I've also learned from her -- and myself, in my old age -- is that beauty is only important where useful. The kind that sits and is admired is useless; the kind that loves and nurtures and protects and perseveres is useful.

So perhaps it is okay that I am an awkward little girl who has grown into a creative, thinking woman. Perhaps that itself is beauty and I had been thinking of it all wrong. If what we call beauty is in fact artifice, I should rather be useful than beautiful.