The Mirror My Mother Never Liked

There was a mirror in the hallway of the house I grew up in that my mother never liked, though she never explained exactly why. It hung by the coat closet, a plain oval thing in a dark wood frame, and she would walk past it most days without so much as a glance, even while checking her reflection in the smaller mirror by the front door not ten feet away. I noticed this as a kid without understanding it. Two mirrors, one avoided and one used, in the same short stretch of hallway.

I asked her about it once, maybe when I was twelve, in the blunt way kids ask things. She said the light in that hallway mirror was unflattering, that it caught her at a bad angle, something practical sounding and easy to accept at the time. I believed her for years. It was only much later, in my twenties, that I started to wonder if the explanation was simpler than that, and also less simple. Maybe it just was not the mirror that mattered. Maybe it was what she happened to be thinking about herself whenever she passed it.

The Habit I Did Not Choose

That mirror is in my apartment now. My mother gave it to me when she moved into a smaller place a few years ago, half apologizing as she handed it over, saying something like, you probably do not even want this old thing. I did want it. I do not fully know why. I hung it in my own hallway, in roughly the same spot relative to my front door as it had been in hers, which was not a deliberate decision so much as the only place it seemed to fit.

What surprised me is that I avoid it too. Not always, not dramatically, but there is a specific kind of day, usually a tired one, where I will walk past that mirror and simply not look, the same quick averted glance I used to watch my mother make without registering what it was. I did not learn this on purpose. Nobody sat me down and taught me to avoid a mirror on hard days. It just arrived in my body somehow, the way certain postures or certain phrases arrive without any memory of being taught them.

What I Think Was Actually Happening

Maybe it just was not the mirror that mattered. Maybe it was what she happened to be thinking about herself whenever she passed it.

I have started to suspect that the mirror itself was never really the problem, for either of us. I think it might just be a convenient object to blame, an unflattering light or an awkward angle, standing in for something less easy to name, which is simply not wanting to look closely on a day when you already feel unsure of yourself. The mirror becomes a kind of marker for mood rather than a judgment on its own. My mother’s version of that marker happened to be an oval mirror in a dark frame. Mine turned out to be exactly the same one, which feels less like coincidence and more like something passed down without either of us noticing the handoff.

I do not know if this is a habit I want to keep. Some days I think avoiding a mirror is a small kindness to myself, a way of not adding scrutiny to an already heavy day. Other days it feels more like avoidance dressed up as self care, a way of not dealing with whatever the tired feeling actually is. I have not settled which one is true, and I suspect it might be both, depending on the day. I have thought about asking her outright why she gave the mirror to me instead of leaving it behind or passing it to someone else in the family, but every time the question forms I lose my nerve, worried the answer might be simpler and sadder than the one I have built up in my head. It is easier, most days, to just live with the object and let it keep its quiet.

Looking Anyway

Lately I have been trying something small. On the days I notice myself about to walk past without looking, I stop and look anyway, just for a second, nothing performative about it. Sometimes it is fine. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of my mother in my own tired face, in the set of the mouth or the shadow under the eyes, and I think about her walking past this same mirror for years, and I wonder what she would have seen if she had stopped the way I am trying to stop now.

I still do not fully understand what she saw, or avoided seeing, in that hallway all those years. I have not asked her again, not directly, though I think about it sometimes when we are on the phone and there is a pause long enough to fit a real question into. Maybe I will ask her eventually. For now the mirror hangs in my hallway, doing what mirrors do, and I try, some days more successfully than others, to actually look.