The Face in the Mirror

The other day I glanced in the mirror and, for the first time in my adult life, recognized the third-grade girl in this photo.

The photo record for me is scarce. There might be half a dozen photos taken of me as a child, and most of them were school photos. I was told that my father "didn't believe in" taking photos, and my mother, who was photographed by her shutterbug father a great deal when she was a child, didn't object to my father's lack of interest. I like to imagine that my mother thought that she was sparing us some agony by only having baby portraits taken twice.

It must have been important to me because my earliest memory was being photographed at four in my balloon dress at Clowntown Studios in Lakewood, Ohio. (I don't remember the photo that was taken when I was around one.) I do remember at the age of five being heartbroken when my balloon dress no longer fit.

Individual school photos stopped in sixth grade, and the one or two that appeared in my high school yearbook showed a teenager who did not have the bright eyes of the musical violin-playing child above.

I'm so happy that I have been able to get the essence of this child back.

Life has its crooked paths. I feel tremendously grateful to have somehow found a path that has allowed me to reconnect with the person I was at eight or nine.