Sunday Scribblings: When we were wee...
The prompt for this third Sunday Scribblings is “When we were wee…” I had half a heart to write something chock full of alliteration, but I felt like that might have been overkill. If I’m frank with you, it’s been an interesting week. It’s not bad. It’s just weird. I feel like the style of writing I’m employing flows more like a stream of consciousness. So just flow with me?
When we were wee, we’d look at our reflection in the mirror or in a pond or in a cooking pot our mothers asked us to wipe. We’ll see ourselves looking back at us. Just us. The face that smiles back, or on certain days, makes goofy faces back, belongs to us alone. Unmarred, unencumbered. Simple yet truthful.
Today, we look at our reflection in the mirror, and we look away. We don’t even recognize the face staring back at us. Somehow, there are shadows. Insecurities cast long shadows. There are deep creases from worry. The eyes that were once bright have lost their gleam from all the tears. The person that is staring back in the reflection somehow shrinks from us. How does that even work? Shouldn’t our reflection truly reflect us? People say the years are kind to some. I beg to differ. The years are never kind. The stories that surface whenever we look at ourselves in the mirror today is enough to make grown men cry. We have seen too much, heard too much, loved too recklessly, hoped too eagerly. So much so that looking at a reflection of ourselves in the mirror at a storefront is too much. We glimpse, yet we scurry away from it, hoping upon hopes that we will somehow outrun our own reflection. We look in the mirror as grown men and women, and we fall out of love. All we see are flaws. There is no part of us worth loving, or so we say. When we happen to connect with yet another burdened human being, we hope to God above that this person is blind. Because only then can they look at what we have become and actually dare to love. We go about in our connections with fear and trembling, expecting at any moment that their eyes will be opened and they will see us. With the creases and the shadows and the ghost of dashed hopes. What would it take for us to look at our reflection and see, truly see ourselves? What kind of power would it take for us to look and love the stretch marks, the scars, the bruises? What would it take for us to laugh at the passage of time’s mark on our bodies, on our memories, on our consciousness?
When we were wee, we didn’t have to fear loving ourselves. The mirror is our friend, or more likely — it shows us a reflection of our friend. There’s a certain innocence about it, a freedom to look at ourselves and laugh and smile and love. The ability to befriend and cherish the person in the mirror.
When you look in the mirror, what do you see?
May 10, 2020
