Little girls and big, in love with love

I kept watching for eyelids to blink with heaviness, to finally shut down.

They didn't.

For weeks, my daughters Asha and Jamila had waited for the latest version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. Now it was past their bedtime. Ten minutes and the show would be over.

Knowing we would be getting home late from communion service, I had taped the Disney TV movie thinking they would agree to watch it the next day. They wouldn't hear of it. Their favorite singers, Brandy and Whitney Houston, were starring, Jamila pleaded. And "funny" Whoopi Goldberg. I reminded them that the next day was a school day, which meant they had to get up early. I told them they would be tired.

They insisted. I gave in. Jimmy popped the popcorn, poured the fruit punch and I took my place between my daughters in front of the television.

Truth is, I couldn't wait either. I love love stories. I've been singing It's a Lovely Night for years. I hope I never stop.

I hope that after Sunday night's movie, my daughters will join me, and that one day they, too, will meet the love of their lives, just the way Cinderella did, the way I did.

Jimmy left us each a bowl of ice cream and went off to bed. I was still watching for the eyelids to fold. Nothing.

Watching my babies' faces, I was drawn back to the time when I watched Cinderella with my sisters. I'm sure I was 8, the same age as Jamila, when I first saw it.

The cast, of course, was all-white then, but it didn't matter because even little black girls needed to be loved and to fall in love. And it didn't matter where you found it or with whom, because love was just that - love.

It is bright daylight and black satin nights. It is a picnic beside still waters or on a park bench. It is that thing that makes you feel like you're dancing in mid-air. It is letting go of one's self and discovering the stranger inside.

Whether it is the sweet invention of a lover's dream or the dearest love in all the world, it is what all of us crave. What we need most in this world. And everything we have to give.

Sitting there with my daughters, I couldn't help but embrace this fantasy, anticipating that lovely feeling I'd get once Whitney Houston had worked her magic with There's Music in You.

I thought my heart might even cry, the way it always does when I witness a love story, but I gathered my emotions and climbed the stairs to my daughters' bedroom.

We needed that goodnight kiss, that quick conversation that would sum up the day and lay my daughters down to sleep.

Later I would lay awake and think about Cinderella and falling in love. And those songs - Impossible, In My Own Little Corner - would replay in my head just like they did when I was 8 years old.

But I would think, too, about how in an age of staggering divorce rates, it would seem that true love doesn't exist anymore, that there's no such thing as finding that special someone and living happily ever after.

I prefer to think that there is, because that's what I want for my daughters and the millions of other little ones who got a glimpse of Sunday night's fantasy. I prefer to think that the dearest love in all the world is waiting somewhere for each of them, that true love is more than a possibility.

I prefer to believe that because I'm in love with love. I was when I was 8 years old. And I am now.