Mirror

I hadn't stared into my eyes in the mirror in quite some time. I've practiced this in the past before some significant even or change, or maybe during some great obstacle in my life. I haven't done this in a while not because I haven't had my struggles...and not because I haven't made some big shifts in my life and philosophy...rather I just simply hadn't given myself a moment to stop and reflect.

I have always seen myself as two. My heart and conscience, and my mind and body...I think that's how I separate them. When I look into my eyes in the mirror, it is as if I am looking into this familiar being that I love like no one else. While the entity that is doing the loving, has no body at all.

A couple of days ago I confronted myself. I looked into my eyes. I watched my pupils waver...growing and shrinking in size despite my steady disposition as I held my face a couple of inches from the mirror. While staring at those familiar eyes, I drifted into the sense that I was standing nearly nose to nose with another being. I became conscious that I was not looking inward but outward. For a brief moment I felt as though I was not looking simply at my reflection, but Ryan.

I let my head fall against the mirror, and it seemed like I was leaning my head against Ryan...and we were understanding our joys, pains, and worries. It was as if Ryan was sympathetic to me because I was sympathetic to him. I reached my hand up and pressed it against the mirror. In the same way, it was as if Ryan and I were reaching out and putting our hands together...feeling moved by that basic human touch that seems so powerful at times.

I stopped looking into my eyes and looked down...and it still felt like I was leaning my forehead and pressing my palm against someone. I began to cry, slow at first. My abdomen and chest tightened and I gasped, holding my breath lightly until I could shiver out shaky, drawn-out breaths. Tears welled up in my eyes, and in my peripheral sight I could see that reflection dealing with the same emotions. Noticing this made me break. I tried to suppress my tears and gasping. My choked breaths broke through though...and I could see the tears falling off of my own face and into the sink. It felt comforting. I felt like I was grieving with someone and supporting them at the same time.

It wasn't until I was writing this that I realized I hadn't cried with someone in a very long time.

Where I come from

My parents are very keen on genealogy and they love to spend countless hours finding links in their families trees...often competing with one another to see who is closer linked to a famous person in history or who can trace their lineage back further.

More recently as I have been interested though, I have come to discover that they have to use distant links even to start somewhere. They use their grandparents siblings or cousins, great aunts or uncles, 2nd or 3rd generation cousins--all as jumping points to start working back. 

In such a way I have realized that all of their, and ultimately my family lineages in a direct descent are unknown. We have definitely been on the losing side of history on both my mother and father's side.

My mother's father was an Scottish-Irish immigrant who came over with his half-dozen brothers and sisters, and they grew up in Texas during the great depression. They left their clan of McGarrah's behind in the UK in order to find a way out of their poverty, only to find an uglier face of it here in the US.

My mother's mother was an alcoholic Osage Indian, and so was her mother and mother before her of Pettit's. I don't need to mention how well the records and treatment were kept of Native Americans...

My father's father was one of 12 Catholic Bennett children that moved from Missouri, Arkansas, to Texas during the depression. Their father was an orphan and nothing is known about his family...well he was an orphan...dead end there.

My father's mother was a Russian/Polish Jew. Her family of Schmidts and Feinbergs came over from Vilnius in modern day Lithuania around the time of the Russian pograms and moved to Brooklyn. Not much of a direction there, it's definitely not as if I can trace any Jews living in Poland, Russia, or anywhere in eastern Europe for that matter.

At least I know who my mother and father are, and who their parents were. That's something! I wish I could go back further though.

Here is an ode from the Greek Pindaros:

Even high deeds of prowess

Have a great darkness if they lack song;

We can hold up a mirror to fine doings

In one way only:

If with the help of Memory in her glittering crown

Recompense is found for labour

In words' echoing melodies.