Afterwhiles

My mother spoke of being a child today, something that always makes me homesick. How is that possible? How can you be homesick for something you never knew? She was a blonde little thing with tip-tilted eyes and a mouth shaped like a gerber baby's mouth--like waiting for a bottle.

Her dark-haired sister is holding her tightly in the picture I have--they are both staring at the camera which snaps the pose for posterity--for me, her daughter. And my daughter. And on and on.

Mirrors fascinated her when she was small. Her sister said she would play for hours with just a hand-mirror, pretending to be a princess, a fairy, a pirate, or just dreaming of places unknown--places beyond the backyard of a small North Carolina mill town. I see the houses now, shabby and dilapidated and see the reflections also of a child under eight who peopled her world with imagined adventure.

One of the mirrors in my grandmother's bedrooms was large and round and attached to a dresser. Some magazine picture of a beautiful lady in a long red dress was pasted in the middle of the mirror. Did my mother speak to her, play with her, smile at her? Did I?

We remember the lady in the red dress, my mother and I and I am glad she was a child of fancy and mirrors were her playmates--I am homesick to know my mother then and I see her tip-tilted eyes and gerber baby's mouth mirrored in my granddaughter's face.