The Look From the Mirror

The Look from the Mirror

Before I go on a date with someone for the first (sometimes even the second or third) time, I check out how I look in the old fashioned full length mirror that my grandparents left to me the year that they both turned 80. They joked with me about the gift, saying that once you turn 80 you really do not want to look closely in the mirror anymore. You don’t reflect well at that age.

They loved that old mirror. My grandfather had inherited it from his own grandparents, and he had begun using it when preparing for his first date with my grandmother. He changed what he wore several times before he finally felt that the mirror reflected his appearance well. As it turned out, she was very impressed, and told him so when she first saw him that night. They were both seventeen at the time. The rest is family history.

I am now 17 myself. I have been through a good number of one-night stands (possibly better named one night trip-and-falls), so it would seem that I need some help in the dating game..

My grandparents had given the mirror a name, which came as no surprise when they told me that. They had a couch named Cecilia, after her mother, and I was told as a child never to ‘jump on Cecilia’.  Every car they had ever owned bore the name ‘Henry’ (of course they always owned Fords). The mirror’s name was Bob, after my great-grandfather on my grandfather’s side. I had seen old pictures of him, and can say that he looked the very vision of the old-fashioned (but recently reincarnated in up-to-date Harlem fashion) word “dapper”. His name should have been ‘Dan’.

There Was This Girl

           There was this girl in my history class: Emmeline. In a way she was kind of an historical artifact herself.  She wore a long, rather formal dress to school, not the shorts and mini-dresses generally preferred by many of her fellow female students. In a way she kind of walked formally as well, regularly stepping with her head straight up in such a way that some girls referred to her as ‘haughty’, but I think she mainly looked down upont them as she was quite tall.

           While I was attracted to her from when I saw her the day of our first class, I don’t think she noticed me in any special way. I was just there in the same room, not someone for her to look at and imagine in any way romantic. 

           But then there was a day, a very rainy day, when we had come out of our history class, the last class of the day, and most of us were headed on our way out of the school to go home. As Emmeline went to go out the door, one of the girls in our history class, Greta, who could be called the ‘gang leader’ of the group of most popular girls, and who called her ‘lemon and lime’ gave Emmeline a push obviously aimed at having her fall into the large puddle in the grass beside the sidewalk. 

           Reacting more quickly than I thought I could, I grabbed her by her left arm, with which she had tried, in vain, to reach back and grasp the door. My impulsive action saved her from falling and being soaked. I looked at the perpetrator and said ‘Nice try Regreta’, using a name some of boys in the class used for her, but never when she could hear, she was that influential with the other girls. When Emmeline turned around to see who had rescued her, she rewarded me with a smile, something I had never seen her do before. But before I could say anything to her, like ask her to the school dance that night, she turned around quickly and walked briskly away, head held high as usual.

Later That Afternoon

Later that afternoon I was spending a much longer time than usual deciding what to wear that night. Maybe Emmeline would be there, so I should dress up, rather than wear my usual crude but cool clothes. But I have no sense of what more formal meant in terms of my clothes. I tried on one set of clothes in front of Bob the mirror and a funny thing happened. I couldn’t see clearly in the mirror what I was wearing. It was all a bit blurred. But I could see a dark blue that did not reflect anything that I was wearing. I couldn’t understand it.

Then a thought came to me. My grandparents had given me an outfit of jacket, shirt and pants all of which were a dark blue and way more formal than anything else that I owned. When I first saw the outfit, I gave them a loud ‘thank you’ that I did not really feel. I knew it was what I had seen my grandfather wear, and look really good wearing, but it wasn’t really me, not at all.

Maybe I should give it a try tonight. I had to dig deep into my closet to find those clothes, but they were there. Slowly, but not so surely, I put the outfit on. I did feel strange. Then I walked over to Bob. What I saw was a rather formally good looking me in the mirror. The image was bright like there was light emanating from the jacket, shirt and pants.

Then something was added to what I saw myself in the mirror wearing: a tie. How could I see what was not there? I didn’t think it over too much. I soon remembered that somewhere in my rarely used bottom drawer there was a blue tie that my grandparents had given me as part of the outfit. Like with the formal jacket, shirt and pants, I had never freely chosen to wear it   Why should I? I didn’t go to church?

Besides, I didn’t know how to tie a tie. My dad had done that for me the very few occasions which called for formal wear: family funerals (mom’s parents and a great uncle of mine) and the weddings of two aunts of mine. These were situation in which I had no choice in what I was to wear. What could I do now? Dad and mom were on vacation, and it wasn’t like we could have a zoom meeting in which he showed me how to tie a tie. I was lost.

Then it happened. I looked at myself in Bob the mirror, both of us with tie in hand. Then my reflected self began very slowly to put on the tie. Having received good clothing advice from Bob before, I didn’t think too deeply into the impossibility of the situation. I thought of Emmeline, and decided to follow the visual instructions I was receiving. Eventually, after several repetitions of the instructive show, and my not doing things the way I should, I finally got it right. I must admit. I did look good!

At the Dance

I walked into the school that night rather shyly,  a feeling that was reinforced by how people I knew stared at me when they first saw me in fancy dress. But, when the band began to play in the auditorium, there was a tapping on my shoulder. When I turned around there was Emmeline. She looked at me and said, “You dress up well. Let’s dance.” And for the rest of our time there we were inseparable. And I felt that Bob wouldn’t mind the lipstick stains on my tie.