Day 14: Brown-Eyed Girl

Songs are written about women like you, Alana Devina Porr. Women who grow from bewitching children with liquid umber eyes swallowing up a good third of their faces and anchored by pixie-dust freckles kissing their miniscule noses.

Eyes solemn beyond their few years. Eyes that take in the fractured world around them and do their best to see it from every splintered point of view. Eyes that try to put the whole puzzle back together again.

And when that puzzle proves to have some missing pieces, those same eyes - older now, and more aware - envision pieces that will do in a pinch and will be a stop-gap for the missing holes in the jigsaw that is a life. Your life.

And because of your personal odyssey, your eyes now see the hurt and the disjointedness, both at home and across the globe, and you seek to relieve the burden and the pain where you can. You look for ways to bring happiness and laughter to people.

I flash back to the day that I met you: your Dad brought you in to the DK and I remember how I thought you were one of the most magical little people I had ever seen. I still think that, although now it's you who brings your Dad into the TH ...

Your eyes can sparkle with life and with mischief; and yet they can brim with compassion and concern.

And lately they have been glowing with a light more intense as you look up - way, way up! - into the face of a man who loves those eyes and sees through them not only what you have endured but also how you have triumphed.

Happy birthday, beautiful, adorkable, brown-eyed girl!