Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

It happens about every 3-4 years and always at my parents’ house. I’m washing my hands in the sink and looking into the mirror of the bathroom I used as a child, and then…Bam! Pow! Bang! A new face is looking back at me from the mirror.

I coast through several years, catching only glances at my face in the mirror, never looking at it as a whole, just this eye as I add shadow, my brow as a pluck a wayward hair, and my bottom lip as I skim over with gloss. And somewhere in there I grew a little older, added a wrinkle or two and the eyes look a little wiser. It always catches my stomach and throws me for a loop. I stare into the looking glass and slowly raise my hand to touch the slightly pronounced cheekbone and graze the darkened area under my eye. I find it funny that it happens all at once, that I don’t recognize the small changes over time.

And why at my parents? In that particular bathroom? That certain mirror? Is it that my sub-conscience is expecting the image of a child, rooted in the routine of walking into the room with the pink roses on the wallpaper and when the image it is expecting isn’t reflected the reality of it all comes to a jolting exposure?

It always shakes me to the core when I realize I’m growing up right before my very eyes.

…Fiona…