Take My Pawn
If my son had his way, which he does often enough, there would be no reflections in our house. At all.
This is a product of his particular neurology, which I've mentioned before, but I have my own products of my own. I have to leave the room if my wife makes hard-boiled eggs, for example.
So my boy leaves bread crumbs. When I go into the bathroom, and the mirrors are askew, I know he passed this way.
(there are other ways I know, often, but then we're all human)
I think, in some part of his brain, he doesn't feel alone with mirrors. It's easy to dismiss this as idiosyncrancy, or even pathology, but in a way I understand, which is why I leave them alone. They're not real, not really.
They're not, either, not reflections. They're nature's Post-It notes, a reminder. Once upon a time, even if it was only a few milliseconds ago, you sort of looked like that, but, then, not really. It's backward, and dated, and awkward, and so much of it depends upon what you really want to see.
But I saw a reflection last night. Or heard it. Felt it, smelled it, whatever. I'm pretty ecumenical when it comes to sensation.
In 1993, I went to school to pick up my daughter after chess club. She was in third grade, in the "gifted program" at school, an odd way at that age of predicting the future but we wanted the best and this was the best we had at the time. And I met Cindy.
Twelve years, 8 to 20 now. Too much life for 12 short years, I think, but then no one's asking my opinion.
Cindy never left, and now she's at Brown University, a college in Rhode Island, a geographic anomaly that tends to hang around Narnia and Oz as far as my particular sense of realism seems to accept, and the phone rang yesterday and she said, "Mr. Sigars? Hi, it's Cindy" and I wanted to close all the mirrors.
Cindy&Friends, Beth's friends, are all back in the neighborhood for some part of summer, and Beth is not. Beth is staying in Texas, currently vacillating between freedom and depression, an adult lesson, so her Scooby Gang decided to cheer her up.
Lucas is almost there. Lucas was going to drive back to Texas with her, when she was going to drive, but that didn't work so he's flying out, and these wacky kids decided to make a video. They shot tape all over town, then came over to the house, with a red-top mop that was supposed to be Beth, and filmed a little in her room, which is not her room anymore and has mirrors just in case.
I went to bed before they came. I remember my early 20s, and mostly musk cologne, and I remember third-graders, so I thought it best to retire lest I get a little stupid.
I would have been stupid, too.
I would have said this: "Say goodbye, now, while you can."
"Always keep certain doors open."
"Hide the mirrors."
Reflected light is the dominion of lost people. Real light always shows the road.
You guys should read "On The Road," by the way, if you haven't. Awesome.
It's about checkers, in other words, not chess. You get to jump. Jump.
Me, not so much. My jumping days are probably over. Still, I hear in (way too loud) voices the songs of being 20, and I wish you the best and I wish me the best, and I wish I were there again and then I don't, and somehow the whole thing has to do with mirrors, and how stupid they are.
6:23:19 PM 
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