A STORY TOLD IN MIRRORS - By Janeen Phillips

She watched in fascination as her older sister primped at the bathroom mirror, layering rouge and foundation to perfection and separating each mascaraed lash with the point of a needle. A work of art.

When she herself became a teenager she used that same mirror to scrutinize every flaw of the unwelcomed face staring back. There was her mother’s bulbous nose with its deep pock marks and she was constantly at war with the hideous white-capped beacons of acne, showing up at the worst possible times.

High on LSD she enjoyed a brief moment of freedom from vanity until she looked in the mirror and saw a green-faced ogre with snakes for hair reflected back.

The one thing she was proud of was the magnificent lion’s mane hair cascading down her back. It was a reward for winning a relentless battle with her mother, who, from birth had shaped her to be a curly-haired Shirley Temple. The golden blonde locks, allowed to reach perfection in her senior year, became her calling card but destructive men answered the call.

She avoided the bathroom mirror in the low income apartment because it reflected back what she did not want to see. Her lion’s mane in a tangled mess and the glistening sheen of a swollen lip. She dabs thick foundation, wincing in pain, her mind racing to form another plausible story.

Her lion’s mane hair stroked his fragile male ego and was his prize, but it had become her liability. She made a decision to end the relationship and wanted to send a clear message. She was shocked, at first, with the image reflected in the glass and the golden tresses laying on the floor. She looks inward with eyes fixed on a future she alone would shape and define.

Mirrors will reflect her many manifestations: thriving as a slender college student and proud as a professional career woman. In middle-age she became unrecognizable to herself when the regrets of life were too much to bear and the weight gained evidence of her sorrow. But she would again rise like the Phoenix from a funeral pyre of grief.

She reaches a quiet acceptance when the mirror reflects an old woman looking back. The lines of worry and of laughter have etched their marks and she gently traces their memories with the tip of her finger. She seeks not to cover them but to wear them as a badge of honor of life well-lived.