In the Mirror

Source: Unknown

When did it happen? When did the person in the mirror become someone I know longer recognize? How did this happen? Aging sometimes is not kind…

Throughout my life I have resembled someone in my family. When I was a young child, I looked like two of my girl cousins. Almost more like them than their own siblings. As I got older, I began to look more like my mother than those cousins and for a while one of my father’s sisters.

However, today when I was washing my hands I looked up and looking back at me was my paternal great-grandmother. To say I was shocked is an understatement. I never met her, but my aunt had a portrait of her with one of several husbands she outlived. We all guessed this was the husband with the last name Moses, but no one knew for sure.

From that mid-century 1800’s portrait many of us on my father’s side of the family found out where the familial left eye originated. For my dad, the left eye was very noticeable. For me, only when I was tired or later in life stressed. My great-grandmother, Clarissa Sujane, had a left eye that not only drooped, but seemed to be set lower than the right one on her face. And… today, there she was, staring back at me in my bathroom mirror.

But for that eye, Clarissa was a handsome woman, not beautiful by any means, but handsome with dark hair and wild gypsy looks. I think I would have liked her since she appeared to be self-confident and certainly spunky to have out lived several husbands!

© 2015 Annie Original Non-Fiction