This charming old farm house in which I reside has a small downstairs bathroom with a single rectangle of a mirror above the sink.  I don’t know who installed it or how tall they were.  I’m guessing taller than me.  When I stand, with shoes on, and look into this mirror (the only mirror in the bathroom) and attempt to gaze upon my own face, I get a sort of decent view of my eyes.  Just my eyes.  If I stand on my tip toes, then I can see my entire face.

I have purchased one of those $6 closet door mirrors from IKEA.  I thought it might get mounted onto the wall once upon a time.  But it never has.  Three or four years later, that mirror is delicately balanced on an old wooden school chair that was once my mom’s and then was once a “rethink your attitude” chair for all the toddlers that used to live with me and is now a chair holding up a mirror.  (A mirror whose corner broke after falling off said chair once before.)

It’s kind of ridiculous.

The point here is not my desire to own a regular length mirror one day so I can actually see what my entire ensemble looks like together.  The point here is – I don’t see a full mirrored version of myself very often.

That’s the point.

Which is fine.  Obviously.

I think maybe all of us (or is it just me) have an idea of what we think we look like in our minds.  Do you know what I mean?  As in, we remember that we have blonde hair because that’s the color our hair was when we were younger.  And then sometimes we catch our reflection and we see a brown haired girl staring back at us and we wonder who she is.  “Uh-oh,” we think.  “She’s me.”  Sometimes it’s a little shocking – what we thought we looked like and what we do look like.

On our Kentucky trip recently my friends and I found ourselves in a fancy downtown hotel ballroom (to hear Mr. Berry, you might recall) and the restrooms were quite nice.  And they featured gigantic wall-sized mirrors.

I washed my hands and turned to look at myself with a quick glance.  I literally turned around and walked back to the mirror.  (Thank goodness I was alone in that bathroom right then.)  What on earth? I looked at myself.  Hard.  Who was that?  I mean, of course I knew who I was, but I was also staring at my MOTHER.

You guys, I am not twenty years old any longer.  Maybe some of you who call yourselves my friends should’ve been telling me this occasionally.

I’m not just someone’s grandma – I look like someone’s grandma!  For the love.

It was like a downright identity crisis.  I kept looking at myself.  Thank goodness, again, that someone did come into the bathroom right then. Who knows how long I might have stood there – trance like.

Of course, I already knew there are portions of my life when I FEEL like my own mother.  Does that happen to you too?

One of the times in my daily life when I most feel like my mother is in the evening stillness.  (What little there is of that at this house.)  When I am loading the dishwasher and wiping down the counters and turning out the lights.  Tidying this day to prepare for that day.

These aren’t terrible things, you know, to look like one’s mother or father, to feel like one’s parent.

What do you do (or wear or say) that makes you feel most like a clone of your mom or dad or grandma or favorite aunt?

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