Mirror mirror on the wall, show me a secret, not if I’m short, not if I’m tall. Mirror mirror on the wall, Give me the insight to love, to love one to love all.
They used to scry with bodies of water – peer at their reflection until their psyche, or the spirits, were revealed and spoke to them in the language of prophecy or riddles. And then mirrors were used.
Something happens when you look deep into a mirror. Deep. Beyond the reflection. Beyond the need for a hairbrush. Beyond the application of lipstick.
Gaze into your looking glass and see what you can see. Alice stepped through. You can too. There’s another world in there. It may look like this one or not. Animals might talk. So might trees. The dead might gather with messages of love or ones of warning. You might see a secret path and the way out of a problem that wasn’t there before.
Perhaps the glass will waver and mists swirl. What do you want to learn from the mirror?
I want to learn that my body is a small part of who I am. That beyond my body, into my innermost being, there exists purpose that goes beyond pain and limitations. That my body is temporary and my spirit eternal. I want to realize that though my body is failing, I am not. I am well along the path to wisdom.
My innermost self, the me that I protect from this place called reality is not the illusion. The refection is. The Bible says Through a Glass Darkly.
Yes.
You must look closely. Gaze into your eyes. We’ve been told they are windows to the soul. We can see another’s thoughts in their eyes. Witness their emotions even if we don’t know why, even if we don’t understand why. We can detect anger. Impatience. Love. Joy. Boredom. Eyes reveal.
Look at your own. Fall into them. Beyond the color – blue, brown, green, hazel. What do your own eyes tell you?
If you see pain, love yourself more. If you see anger, love others more. If you see impatience, give yourself grace. If you see joy, give it away. If you see resolve, follow through.
Actually, I wasn’t all that hidden when sitting there, but most people didn’t look up to peer for children amongst the branches.
I clocked a lot of hours in that tree.
Williams was a dead-end street so there wasn’t much to see other than the occasions when the neighbor’s teenager would climb onto their roof and play his trumpet. Weird kid. Bad trumpet player, but I suppose he should get credit for practicing.
I’m sure that I dragged a book up there with me now and again, but I don’t remember reading in the tree. Of course, I read everywhere. I read like most people breathe – everywhere all the time.
I was older—12, 13, 14 – on the cusp – living my life, but also waiting for it to begin.
I do remember one vivid day at 14 when I waited for my boyfriend while sitting in the tree and there he came, bepopping down the middle of Williams, carrying the largest heart-shaped box of candy I’d ever seen. Whitman’s. It was Valentine’s Day – a special occasion. I usually did my tree-sitting in the summer.
I liked being in the tree. I felt hidden and the configuration of the branches made climbing easy. The trunk and major limb were in such a position as to make reclining in the tree very comfortable for my lithe teenage self.
One summer I took to making caftans out of old sheets. I’d waft around in yards of white percale dragging behind me and eventually climb the tree –no mean feat in an oversized sheet and sit there pondering the universe. Feeling spiritual and Egyptian in my badly sewn caftan.
Kenny-the-roof-trumpeter had nothing on me in the weirdness department.
I do remember dragging bags of Doritos into the tree with me. I carried the bag in my clenched teeth reserving both hands to scramble up the tree. Doritos were the new snack and took the country by storm. There were two flavors – plain and taco. I loved the taco ones and considered the bag a single serving. I was always hungry in those days. A bottomless pit of hunger and volatile hormones.
I’d wipe my orange-stained fingers on my caftan when done.
So, there I was, a long gangly teenager in a bedsheet streaked with orange stains perched in a tree going through puberty one long summer day at a time.
One doesn’t usually think of a priestess as vivacious, but Vivienne was that and more. In a future lifetime, she would have been the perfect cheerleader for the local high school team. She was pert, petite, cheerful and possessed a giggle that could make even curmudgeons laugh aloud.
But as the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter, her path was foretold in prophecy and her parents had no choice but to turn her over to the Temple at Ivance. She was not sad for Vivienne was excited as always was at the thought of a new adventure. Her father, however, was bereft.
He had hand-built her trunk for her. Wiping a tear he hoped no one would see, he loaded it into the cart the temple sent to carry Vivienne off. It weighed next to nothing because it was filled with nothing as instructed. She would arrive at Ivance with only the trunk and the clothes on her back. This felt wrong to him. He was a fortunate and proud man. He could provision his daughter.
She was his favorite child. The last of 13 – all who had survived. But Vivienne was the only one who had thrived. She was the life of the household, and he knew things would be very different without her. He was filled with a type of remorse he couldn’t admit to. He wished one of the other girls had been the seventh of the seventh. Agnes perhaps. She seemed more temperamentally suited to the life he imagined the temple would entail—not that he or anyone knew. The temple was self-sufficient and cloistered. The daily routines of the women there were shrouded in secrecy. The only glimpse the villagers had was on the holy days and then all they saw were well-practiced rituals with everyone silent and in step.
It was hard to imagine Vivienne silent for any length of time. She’d been chattering nonstop since her first word.
Vivienne bounced around from sibling to sibling stopping to nuzzle the horse’s neck now and again. The women sent to fetch her stood silent and dignified. Vivienne was a bird flitting from branch to branch. She understood that it would be some time before she saw her family again, which concerned her, but what an adventure awaited her! Rumor had it that she would be taught to read. She couldn’t even imagine the wonders about to unfold.
As she said her goodbyes, punctuated with giggles and exhortations to live a good life, the priestesses began moving about checking the reins and adjusting the cart contents when one of them finally said “Vivienne, the time of fulfillment has come. Let us leave.”
Vivienne hopped into the back of the cart and sat amidst the bags of wheat—offerings from the village folk—and her empty trunk.
As the cart made its way down the rutted path, the villagers came out to wave goodbye. They too would miss Vivienne. Everyone’s heart was heavy, but Vivienne’s eyes sparkled.
Gather round, children. I have a tale of woe and fright which you should heed.
The world for you now is all peppermint and puppies. You are given food when hungry, a warm safe bed to sleep in, and activities to grow your sweet young minds. You are loved unconditionally, and someone is forever taking your photo because you are cute. You have toys and playmates, play-do and guilt–free chocolate chip cookies. Yes, guilt-free. You have not yet met the phenomenon of apologizing for eating that which pleases you.
Instead of Mother, may I please have another you will grow up and push the cookies away saying, “My doctor says I can’t indulge.”
And doctors – instead of once a year for a physical and the occasional cold, you will have to go once a week and pay the money you earn at a job you have grown to hate for the privilege. And it is significant money. No pocket money for the movies or a small toy at the Walmart. No ice-cold Orange Crush on a hot afternoon. $65 copay and $200 for the prescription du jour that tastes likes toadstools soaked in gasoline and sprinkled with black licorice.
You have so many doctors that your sick leave at the job you have grown to hate is not sufficient and you have to use your beach days. Yes. Precious trips to be a kid again at the beach are canceled or curtailed because of the growing collection of doctors in your monster closet.
And that’s not all. The job you have grown to hate does not pay enough to keep up with not just your doctors but your taxes. Taxes are money you give to the government in exchange for, supposedly, services and protections you receive in return. These services and protections never seem to serve and protect what you have or need.
The house you live in takes more of your money if you can find people to make the repairs needed. Often you will live with a drippy faucet that keeps you awake at night because no one will take your money and fix it or you don’t have as much money as they say they need to fix it. You will spend your free time cleaning it, cutting the grass, and washing the windows except when you are at the Home Depot buying the things you need to do that with the dwindling money from the job you have growing to hate.
Instead of kindergarten with soft mats to sit on for story time, you will have to go t that job you are growing to hate. There instead of a room with colorful carpets and crepe paper flowers on a bulletin board you will be met with a beige cubicle and a sign that says Your Mother Doesn’t Work Here, Wash Your Qwn Dishes. Instead of a smiling teacher who draws happy faces on your worksheets, you will have Brad the Boss who constantly criticizes you and complains about how many times you use the restroom. Brad is all frowny faces and plans for improvement.
When work is finally done. You will get in your car just like hundreds of others and fight heavy traffic to get home where you have to rush to prepare dinner and wash dishes and do a load of laundry and watch Wheel of Fortune while your kids frolic in the bathtub.
Yes. Your kids are having fun. You are not. Be a kid. As long as you can.
W. Va. Fur and Root 