I stand looking in the mirror. I don’t often visit myself in such a way. I like a conjured image of myself, better. The me in my mind’s eye is wiser, kinder (and not so wrinkled). No wonder I prefer it.

No wonder that I need to hold myself still before an honest mirror on occasion. Honesty is the admission price for insight and growth. It is the foundation stone for relationship – else, how is a connection made – and with whom? Yet, it takes a funny kind of courage to stand here – to really look.

I sigh and screw up my face and the mirror-me, of course, does the same. So, I begin a little game of automatic mimicry, shrugging my shoulders, raising my eyebrows, turning right and left and looking at myself through the corner of my eyes, hoping to catch my image making some other move, that would show that we are not the same. I play this way for a while, until I get bored. I am really not that fascinating. Watching myself like this is not really so enlightening, after all.

So, I turn again to face the mirror, dead on. I watch me move my arm and touch the surface of the mirror and lean in. The cold, smooth glass gives way and I fall inward to a grassy hill in the meadow of my imagination. I pinch myself to see if I have really come along and wince and smile in confirmation. I lean back and look up at the blue, blue sky, above.

That is when I notice that you are there beside me. You turn your head and look at me and we give each other a grin. We sit up and you take my hand and give it a slight tug. I look from your hand into your eyes, and there I find another mirror – one that is honest, but also kind, for it is framed in love. You touch my face. Somehow you love its wrinkles. Somehow you see my failures, but do not see me as a failure. And that gives me strength and hope (which my be quite the same thing).

Your mirror provides a different kind of reflection – honest, but not nearly so boring. Not locked on me, but engaged in a relationship where growth is not only possible, it is joy.

Your eyes make it so.

Thank you.

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