I sit down at the new vanity table in my bedroom, a 13th birthday gift from my adoptive mother and grandparents. It’s great, but the real draw is the new lighted makeup mirror my grandmother’s friend Lillian sent. She’d brought hers on a recent visit and saw how much I loved it. She also saw that the chances of anyone else giving me one were about zero. My family isn’t big on things like lighted makeup mirrors.
I click the toggle switch that turns the lights on. They surround the edges of the round mirror, offering me a choice of “daylight,” “office light,” or “evening light.” I shift to evening light and a warm pink glow bathes my face. I study my features, rearranging them in my mind to conjure up the face that might be my birth mother’s. Keep the green eyes, I think. Make the hair fuller and more wavy. I turn my head a bit to one side. Keep the high cheekbones but strengthen the chin. I stare harder, until my eyes begin to water, and her face begins to take shape. It’s blurry, and incomplete, but it’s her, I just know it.
“I wish you were here. I wish I could ask you why I’m here and you’re not. I wish I knew what you liked to do. How you sound. If you like to read, and write, and dance. If you ever think about me.”
Nearly a half-century later, I am amazed to finally be able to stare at her photo on my phone. I zoom in tight on her face and examine every feature. She is in her 80s now, but I can see that the image I once held in that makeup mirror wasn’t far off. I still want to say to her: “I wish you were here. I wish I could ask you why I’m here, and you’re not. I wish I knew what you liked to do. How you sound. If you like to read, and write, and dance. If you ever think about me.” But I can’t.
She’s not much closer now than she was then. She is as silent as the reflection in the mirror – she doesn’t want to talk to me or know me. But at least now I can see her face. I’ve clicked a switch I never could reach before and now I see myself in a whole new light.
