We have thousands of pictures of you from when you were a baby, a little girl, growing up. This one is my favorite.

You are only a year old, but I can already see in your eyes the woman you will become. This look is who you are: curious, tough, smart, mysterious.

You are already beautiful in this picture—not just beautiful, a world-class beauty, like your mother.

It is not the shape of your face, your blazing eyes, or your hair absorbing the light as it always does.

Your beauty radiates from within you. You are like cold fire; like the Aurora Borealis. Looking at you gives a beautiful feeling. That is the rarest kind of beauty.

Your hair was not red at this age. It is reflecting the reds of the setting sun. Your hair always captures the light: golden in the afternoon when you go swimming in the lake, auburn in the evening, silver-streaked in the moonlight. When you first wake up in the morning and come into the kitchen, it glows with light like phosphorescence. I don’t know how your hair does this.

But the look on your face and the joy it gives me is not the reason this is my favorite picture of you.

It is my favorite picture because I am holding you up. You can’t see any part of me in this photo. But I am there. I was carrying you in my arms on our farm one evening and saw the red light of the setting sun and asked the photographer (Mrs. Rachel, of course) to take your picture. There is another picture where I am holding you above my head and flying you. You loved that so much and would say, “Daddy, fly me!” and I would fly you up and down. But that is not my favorite because you can see my beat-up, gnarly hands.

I want you to keep this picture and save it for a day, hopefully many years from now, when I am not around for you to talk to.

Keep this picture and remember: I will always be there for you, my precious baby, no matter what is going on in your life. I will always be holding you and lifting you into the light.