Through the Looking Glass

A couple of days ago my daughter discovered the medicine cabinets in her new bathroom. Our old house didn’t have medicine cabinets and she thought they were fantastic. She deemed them secret doors and opened and shut them over and over again, hiding something new inside each time. After a minute, I showed her how she could see herself from a whole bunch of different angles by tilting the mirrored door toward the mirror on the wall. She stared at herself in fascination and I remembered something I hadn’t thought of in years.

When I was little I would lock myself in the bathroom, climb up on the sink and sit there staring at my reflection for a long time. Part of the time I was trying to decide whether or not I was cute enough to be on TV. I thought (with all of the self centered vanity of a six year old) that overall I was pretty darn cute, with big eyes and blonde hair, but I was not quite sure about my nose, which was not buttonish, perky, or upturned. Was it a TV quality nose? I wasn’t sure.

It was important for me to figure it out, because more than anything, I wanted to take over Holly Marshall’s role on Land of the Lost. I thought she was awful and stilted, and I just knew that if the people in charge got a look at me in action, I would be in, and she would be out. No question. After all, I was an excellent actress. I knew this because I was able to tell adults absolute whoppers without ever getting caught. Still, I would practice making faces in the mirror, trying out different emotions and examining my face for believability.

I would start looking in those mirrors and I would become transfixed. Not by my face, but by the reflection of the reflection. The reflections would double in on themselves until they almost didn’t look like me. The girl I saw off in the distance looked different, prettier, richer – luckier. But when I closed the mirror she disappeared.

I was sure the mirror girl really existed. I was sure that when I closed the medicine cabinet she was off in her parallel universe, one with a pink canopy bed, voice lessons and a starring role on Broadway in Annie. Sometimes I would press my head to the mirror and I would think, if I hold my head here long enough, I will get through the mirror and I will be in her world.

It became a game – inventing little tests for myself. If I completed the test and wished as hard as I could, I would get through. If I stay submerged in the tub for twenty seconds without hearing any noise… If I can make my way around the house without touching the ground... If I can walk through the whole house while looking down into a mirror so that it looks as though I’m walking on the ceiling… But inevitably in the middle of one of my tests someone would call my name, or make noise, or ask me what I was doing and it would be ruined, all ruined. It was like that old movie, Somewhere in Time, where Christopher Reeve travels back into the past through sheer force of will, but gets called back to the present and torn away from his true love when he catches a glimpse of a present day penny. For me every stray voice was a penny, bringing me back to the reality of what I felt was a very ordinary, non-shiny life.

After a while, the mirrors lost their allure. As a teenager I felt awkward and ugly and had no desire to look at myself from multiple angles. When I did catch a glimpse of the girl in the mirror, she seemed to be going through just as awkward a time of it as I was. Still, sometimes, on very bad days, I would lean against the mirror and wish for something different, something shinier.

Even now, when I’m stressed, I will go into the bathroom, close my eyes and rest my head on the coolness of the mirror, and until recently, I’d completely forgotten why. (Isn’t it funny how certain actions can be comforting long after we’ve forgotten why they were comforting in the first place?)

I guess sometimes we all want to climb inside. We want our lives, our families, our friends - but we want things to be smoother, less complicated, less bumpy - gleaming like the surface of a polished mirror. Yeah - the bumps teach us, they shape us, they mold us - I KNOW. But they also just kind of suck, and we all get tired of them, sunday school lessons notwithstanding.

This week I'll be at the old house in Utah, wrapping things up and giving it a final scrubbing. If you happen to see me out in the backyard, trying to do three cartwheels and then a somersault, all in a perfect line, or trying to make it all the way around the yard without touching the ground, rest assured that I haven't lost my mind completely, I'm just - wishing a little.