|
The Ugly Mirror
This evening I looked into the
ugly mirror. Someone nasty lives in there.
Sophia was in the bath where she
is happiest. Her chubby legs glistened with warm water as
she squatted, then stood to pour water equally between her
eight graded cups. She trilled a little song, drank from
the trickling faucet and laid on her belly. She lined up
her sponge shapes and rubber dolphin babies on the edge.
Then came the bad lady with the
shampoo.
 I
have tried all methods of washing Sophie's hair without
pouring water into her face known to womankind. I have the
no-tears shampoo, so soap's not the issue. It's the water
that goes from being her friend to choking her. I have
tried tilting her head back so the water runs down her
shoulders. She always pulls her chin down, sending a river
into her eyes. I've given her a washcloth to put over her
face: same result. I've tried to beguile her into lying on
her back so I can rinse off the top of her head with the
spray nozzle. No way.
Tonight I tried them all again,
with that sickly patient voice you get when you are close
to saturation point. She started screaming and flailing,
which sent shampoo bottle and rinsing cup flying. I was
rankled.
I felt my face screwing up in
anger. Sophie's screwed up too. Soon we were nose to nose,
equal parts wet and irate. I started to have a very
strange feeling, a sort of retro deja vu. I was looking
straight into my own face.
I don't need a reflection to see
what my anger looks like, it's there in Sophia's face. She
holds the ugly mirror that shows the worst of me.
My mothering is highly imperfect.
For every twenty nice things I do, there's a tense word or
an impatient sigh for the lost shoe or the tuna she just
spit out on the high chair tray. But now, at almost two
and a half, when I sigh, she sighs too. She waits and
watches all the time, and she's a perfect mimic.
 But
sometimes I don't want to know what she thinks, and on our
worst days I am especially reluctant to find out what she
thinks of me. She isn't old enough to be disingenuous or
sophisticated enough to be manipulative. All she does is
hold up the unattractive view of myself that I'm throwing
at her. Like a boomerang, it comes back and smacks me
right where it should.
One morning Sophia was playing in
the hallway. I managed to sneak to my laptop, where I got
a little writing time in. I was on a roll and didn't want
to stop, which of course alerted a her radar. She dropped
the bunny she was burying under a pile of cloth diapers
and trotted over to see what I was so intent on. I pried
her little hands off the keyboard and continued, only
slightly daunted. Soon she had snaked her hand into the
drawer and gotten a chapstick, which she began rubbing on
my desk.
"Sophie, knock it off. Go play
with your bunny," I instructed.
She ignored my directions,
pushing the chapstick closer and closer to the computer
with chubby fingers.
"Please!" I yelled. I wanted so
much to finish my e-mail. Then I would read to her, or sit
in the sandbox with her. My desire to finish what I was
doing raised my ire. A prickle of annoyance shot up the
back of my neck.
I didn't want to lose my patience
or my train of thought. I started to give her that look,
the one in the ugly mirror.
This time, instead of my face,
she gave me her own, soft and sweet. "I just love you,
Mommy. Calm down," she said, giving me a tender pat.
 Calm
down. I'd said it to her half a dozen times, throwing it
on her like grated Parmesan on spaghetti. I never thought
I'd get it back--and appropriately.
I just love you. Calm down. I
repeat the words on those difficult days when she's
behaving like elastic that stretches away, only to snap
back viciously when the distance or tension is too great.
I feel smothered, I've lost my
independence..I just love you.
I'm anxious or angry or
impatient...Calm down.
The mirror works.
|
© Copyright 2000/2001/2002. All rights reserved.
|
 |
 |
