Reflection in the mirror
I am privileged to be taking part in http://kaymacleodbooks.com/summer-blo... and my contribution is a short story that I wrote some time ago but have revamped especially for this event. My day is 31 August
Reflection in the Mirror
Toni sat at her dressing table gazing at her reflection in the mirror. What she saw was an ageing woman with lines drawn on her face like a road map. She could see the remnants of the joys, worries and sadness from the past etched around her eyes and mouth. The once supple and firm skin now sagging as a result of losing weight then finding it again. What once were cheeks now seemed to be hollows and the supple neck of her youth was gone. It grieved her to think that her youthful looks had disappeared and that she couldn’t remember exactly when that had happened. Did she pay so little attention to herself that what must have been a gradual maturity over the years seemed to have occurred over night? Where had those years gone where she had looked pretty and her skin glowed with the exuberance of youth?
Her body, long past its prime, had succumbed to gravity with a passion, the only passion her body felt now. She remembered seeing the movie Shirley Valentine where Shirley’s lover kissed ‘her jiggly bits’. If Toni were Shirley she would be showered with a thousand kisses all over because she didn’t have any bits left that weren’t jiggly.
Toni had adult children, long gone from home, so she had a lot of time to ponder on things. She was glad she wasn’t bringing up a family now with so much technology to distract them. She was too set in her ways to ‘get with that program’ – she preferred to do things the old fashioned way and she resented being dragged into the ever evolving world where people communicated mainly through devices. Then there were the drugs and the binge drinking problems, all of which she was relieved to know were now beyond her parenting days. She couldn’t understand the mentality of drinking for the sole purpose of getting drunk; she had never been drunk in her life and for many years had not even touched alcohol at all. As for drugs she had to push herself even to take pain killers for a headache.
As much as age caught her by surprise she was glad that she didn’t have the anxieties and pressures of youth any more. The lost loves, the hormonal rages, the curfews, the rules, the mistakes. But then on the plus side of being younger there was the never ending energy and lust for life that promised to be there forever, but the reality was that it wasn’t there for her anymore. Why hadn’t she prepared herself more for getting older, taken better care of herself?
Life for Toni was different now, slower and less exciting perhaps, but on the whole it was a good life if not a little lacking in excitement. She was reasonably fit and could out walk many people in her age group. She was fortunate to be married to a kind gentle man who loved her very much and never mistreated her. Though the future was unknown there still appeared to ‘be’ a future so there were many things to be grateful for.
She wasn’t totally unhappy but she did need to grieve for the woman her mind still believed her to be but who the mirror couldn’t seem to find anymore. If life was a fairy tale and she was Snow White her mirror would tell her that she was the ‘fairest of them all’. But life isn’t a fairy tale and she was no Snow White but perhaps tomorrow she would go to the shopping mall and look for a mirror that might be able to offer her a better reflection!
Reflection in the Mirror
Toni sat at her dressing table gazing at her reflection in the mirror. What she saw was an ageing woman with lines drawn on her face like a road map. She could see the remnants of the joys, worries and sadness from the past etched around her eyes and mouth. The once supple and firm skin now sagging as a result of losing weight then finding it again. What once were cheeks now seemed to be hollows and the supple neck of her youth was gone. It grieved her to think that her youthful looks had disappeared and that she couldn’t remember exactly when that had happened. Did she pay so little attention to herself that what must have been a gradual maturity over the years seemed to have occurred over night? Where had those years gone where she had looked pretty and her skin glowed with the exuberance of youth?
Her body, long past its prime, had succumbed to gravity with a passion, the only passion her body felt now. She remembered seeing the movie Shirley Valentine where Shirley’s lover kissed ‘her jiggly bits’. If Toni were Shirley she would be showered with a thousand kisses all over because she didn’t have any bits left that weren’t jiggly.
Toni had adult children, long gone from home, so she had a lot of time to ponder on things. She was glad she wasn’t bringing up a family now with so much technology to distract them. She was too set in her ways to ‘get with that program’ – she preferred to do things the old fashioned way and she resented being dragged into the ever evolving world where people communicated mainly through devices. Then there were the drugs and the binge drinking problems, all of which she was relieved to know were now beyond her parenting days. She couldn’t understand the mentality of drinking for the sole purpose of getting drunk; she had never been drunk in her life and for many years had not even touched alcohol at all. As for drugs she had to push herself even to take pain killers for a headache.
As much as age caught her by surprise she was glad that she didn’t have the anxieties and pressures of youth any more. The lost loves, the hormonal rages, the curfews, the rules, the mistakes. But then on the plus side of being younger there was the never ending energy and lust for life that promised to be there forever, but the reality was that it wasn’t there for her anymore. Why hadn’t she prepared herself more for getting older, taken better care of herself?
Life for Toni was different now, slower and less exciting perhaps, but on the whole it was a good life if not a little lacking in excitement. She was reasonably fit and could out walk many people in her age group. She was fortunate to be married to a kind gentle man who loved her very much and never mistreated her. Though the future was unknown there still appeared to ‘be’ a future so there were many things to be grateful for.
She wasn’t totally unhappy but she did need to grieve for the woman her mind still believed her to be but who the mirror couldn’t seem to find anymore. If life was a fairy tale and she was Snow White her mirror would tell her that she was the ‘fairest of them all’. But life isn’t a fairy tale and she was no Snow White but perhaps tomorrow she would go to the shopping mall and look for a mirror that might be able to offer her a better reflection!
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